SHEER WILL TURNED TO PASSION: MY ANDROID LEARNING COMMUNITY(ALC) EXPERIENCE



Joe-smith right here! Android developer wannabe.
ALC learner Uyo.

It started with one of those links you see on social media. It was shared by my friend Francis, a reigistration link for the andela program. I thought to myself "here they go again with one of them unprofitable links"; I thought again "well, why don't you register, there is no harm in trying". Then with less zeal, I registered for the program.

I however was not anticipating any response from the organizers, as at some point I forgot about it.
Then came my friend, "Joe! have you seen a mail from andela concerning the link we registered for?" I was like, "what? what link? Oh! Andela, I forgot about it". I refreshed my mail again and again, no mail from ALC....I didn't get selected.
Well, I didn't feel like I had missed anything, until after noticing how my friend had been frequenting udacity website, android developer website, writing some codes on android studio and running his first android app; it then dawned on me, "Joe! this could have been you". What more could a brother do? Well, I tried to understand what he was doing and despite being exposed to programming in school, it seemed relatively hard to catch up with his pace.

I repented of my lack lustre attitude and wished I would be given similar opportunity and then, voila! the long awaited mail came in. I was accepted late into the program.
Now, I've been accepted, but still, that feeling of inadequacy set in, I felt I was terribly lagging behind and I could never catch up with the progress of others.
Nevertheless, with encouragement from friend and self determination, video after video, practice after practice, code after code, project after project, I have built and ran a couple of android applications and I can comfortably give myself a pat on the back.

I had done BASIC, VBasic, Python, C++ in school and never had I for once thought of a career path in programming. I could barely grasp the syntax of these languages as I felt that they kept changing according to the language. Even if I could get the syntax correct, my logic would be wrong and my program would be just as dump as the programmer. I never believed in debugging, once I saw any red line in my code, I just believed that it could'nt be resolved and I'd hurriedly abandon the project.

These were problems I was expecting to encounter in the course of learning android development.
Yes, I actually encountered them, but many thanks to udacity(great teachers). They made my journey in this program possible. With them I could already see the light at the end of the tunnel.

My appreciation to ALC is endless for providing this opportunity to this once lazy programmer.
It has been a great learning experience.
There's this joy I have when I build an app and it functions just the way I want it to.

Oh! Think you're good with recognizing country flags?, here's a link to a game you should try:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B-L0XvylumQnaXg0MnM0QmpDRkE

Are you Lds? wanna learn about LDS ordinances? Try this:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B-L0XvylumQnTWtsc1luVEI5TjA