My tech journey has not been a bed of roses. It has been flux with ups and downs, motivation and demotivation. I have seen the good, the bad and the ugly (maybe not so ugly as I am just starting). As the axiom says, "Nothing good comes easy". Here, I am set to write about the challenges so far in my tech journey.
Lack of system/laptop:
First of all, I faced the challenge of not having a system to learn with. Now in tech, you can guess how difficult it is to code with a laptop not to talk of phone. Each time I finished any project I have to find a system to check for the responsiveness of my work, write the media queries and keep checking it to make sure its not so poorly done and you will hardly notice it was done with phone. This made me take a lot of time to finish any work but I didn't deter. At a time I couldn't cope or learn much with the stress of looking for a system to check my work. It became imperative I needed a system as I started learning JavaScript. This made me sell my business and I got myself a laptop.
Lack of Electricity:
There was also the issue of electricity. Being productive with writing codes has everything to do with electricity to charge the gadgets but in my case, we had no electricity. This became a thorn on my rose. I had to go to cybercafés, barber's shop or anywhere at all I see light generating set to charge. Sometimes too, my folks will go out of their way to fuel our own electricity generating set. This consumed a lot of money due to fuel price and scarcity. As the days roll into weeks and months, I had given up on the electricity issue until help came in the ninth month of my journey: our electricity was reconnected back to a more efficient and constant source.
Lack of internet connectivity:
In my place, how fast you can connect to the internet solely depends on how close a network provider's mast is to you. Due to the fact that we've moved in to our current location before my tech journey started, I had to face the challenge of finding good internet connectivity whenever I am working on anything around the house. This made me stay in quite uncomfortable places to write my codes. Now, I have discovered a good spot in the house to comfortably stay and do my thing!
Lack of data subscription:
My government does not have provision for internet data subscription. This is left to the network providers who bill citizens as they please for internet data subscription. When I run out of data, I will be forced to reload again. Sometimes, even when I subscribe for a whole month, it finishes in one or two weeks time. I remember on a certain occasion I cried because I recharged for a month and it finished while I was still trying to load one video for a tutorial that same day. I am still facing this challenge but has learnt to read more tutorial articles than I watch tutorial videos online.
Lack of proper funding:
For all other challenges, proper funding has been the sole of them all. So far, I have used some money left from the sale of my business to fund my learning process. I have no idea yet what to do when it finishes but I keep going because I do not want to look back in the next two years and regret quitting over trivial issues as this.
Struggle with the concepts:
On the intellectual level, I have the challenge of understanding the new concepts I come across everyday. This is a totally new aspect to what I am used to all my life. As a code newbie, the terminologies confused me a lot. I couldn't understand the difference between frontend and backend, margin and padding, git and GitHub, and so on. I am yet to understand fully though, but the constant practice over the months has done me a lot of good.
Sitting my ass down to code:
I struggled with starting to write code. Starting every project entails planning the codes step by step. This was a bit difficult for me at first. I overcame this challenge by always telling myself to start first. So once I start, winning every step of the project encourages me to go for the next step. This way, I can go on till I am exhausted for the day.
Struggle with codes:
Codes can really be disobedient. Maybe I don't know the intricacies yet. I have not learnt to make my code work as immediately as I like it. Now, I have heard a lot of code gurus complain about this one too. So I tell myself, "You are not alone in this. You can always pull through." I also learnt that for every bug and error in my codes, I definitely have a hand in it. There must be something I am not doing right yet. So I keep working on it.
For all these challenges I have overlooked them or found a way of working around them like my life depends on it (maybe it does). I am not giving up. So help me God!