I would like to use this medium to appreciate all of you. Most especially those who indicated an interest in me to further share my experience as a Freelance Software Developer. I decided to share my experience here as a way to add a little spice to the Webmaster section of Nairaland.

It is definitely an honor for me to share further.
In case, you have not read Part 1.
Here is the URL: https://www.nairaland.com/5938926/nicholas-idoko-experience-freelance-software

My experience continues thus:

As I sat down in Kingsley's room I, in fact, felt very lucky because Kingsley did not shy away from sharing with me how much money he has made from developing websites for various people. It became clear to me that I was completely wasting my time watching movies day in day out. On a side note, I believe I am blessed, in the sense that it is easier for me to understand lessons so I didn't do much reading in school. I simply watched a lot of movies and managed to excel.

After a long conversation with Kingsley, I decided to learn Java. Looking back now, I would have been shouting ABORT MISSION, ABORT MISSION The reason for this would later come down in a later part of my experience.

I asked Kingsley if he could teach me how to program and he said time is the problem. I could remember his exact words. He said: "Nick, you know say I like woman and I no want make people think say I be nerd for this lodge. I would not have the time to teach you but I can guide you if you have any questions. In the meantime, start learning Java."

I took it upon myself to learn Java. The next day, I rushed to Douglas Market in Owerri in search of a book on how to learn Java programming. Prior to that, I saw a lot of ebooks. I just didn't feel comfortable learning with an e-book. Also, remember we were having power issues. I went around the market and to my surprise, I could not find any book on how to code Java. I felt a bit disappointed.

I went back to the lodge, packed my bags, and traveled home that same day. Home is Enugu State, coal city state, 042.

I had a mission for the ASUU strike of 2013. I MUST LEARN HOW TO CODE

I got home and in the early hours of the morning, I rushed to Ogbete Main Market. I asked around for bookshops and I remember a guy walked me all the way from the gate of the market to the exact shop where so many books on programming were stocked. I was wowed, In my head, I thought, it seems a lot of people have started learning to program here in Enugu. That there were this many books on Programming.

I requested a book on Java and the salesperson had like 10 various books. I decided to buy 'Introduction to Java Programming' by Y. Daniel Liang. The funny thing is I cannot even remember how much I bought that book and I can confidently say that that book was the foundation of me being a software developer to this day. If you have seen this book, you would know that the book is huge. It is like one of those Anatomy books medical students carry around. I was fearless and I was confident that I would tear this book apart.

I got home, I flipped through the book and all I could recognize was the first chapter of the book since that was all we did in school. The rest where jibberish. I remember when I flipped to Java Server Pages and Database and my head felt shooked. I started reading and practicing. It was fun sometimes and sometimes, it was utter hell. I remember the first time I made a mistake of not adding a semicolon. It drove me crazy, literally. I looked at the code snippet front and back and I could not see that there was no semicolon at the end of one my statement.

I could not sleep throughout that night, I slept for a while, woke up and looked at it, still nothing. At a point, I saw myself shouting at the laptop. , I would shout and I would beg the laptop to please run the code successfully. It was at this instance, that it occurred to me that a computer is thoroughly an idiot machine, GARBAGE IN GARBAGE OUT. One thing with me is I make sure I solve all the exercises in the book no matter how many they are and I can't just move to the next chapter without having to do that. I was so frustrated.

The way, I solved that problem was funny to me. Now, because I have looked at the code so much the picture of the code was embedded in my brain so deep that I could literally see the lines of code no matter what I am doing. One evening, a friend of mine, Tiger, his real name is Bright but we all call him Tiger or El Tigre. He came to my house with PlayStation for us to play Soccer. It was while playing the game and mind you he was beating me mercilessly in the soccer match that I discovered that I had missed a semicolon in the second line of the statement. I ran to my laptop, corrected it and the code ran successfully. It was at that moment, I PAID MY DUES AND RESPECT TO SEMICOLON .

I kept on practicing and moving forward to the next chapters. I was already an introvert but coding made matters worse. It was as if my level of "introvertness" was multiplied exponentially. All I did and wanted to do was code from morning till night. It got to the point that my parents became worried. My mom kept on complaining that I was spending so much time on the computer and I should be reading my books in case they call off the ASUU strike. My dad was complaining that I do not have time to do chores in the house again and I have neglected washing his car, clothes, and some other stuff, I did without bothering before.

I would not lie, I understood where they were coming from, I normally did all those things but as I dived deep into coding I gradually neglected everything and focused on just CODE. SLEEP. EAT. REPEAT. My life just became a cycle.

At that time, I have never been in LOVE but I started to understand what my friends do say about how being in LOVE can make your priorities singular and your mind distorted. I was IN LOVE with CODING.

The complaints from my parents started to increase and I started to bounce . I would wake up very early in the morning, clean up and go to the library, spend the whole day there till night. I would be back exhausted and sleep off I found an escape route. There was this small library in Enugu called Opus Dei, opposite UNEC. It was amazing, they had Air Conditioning, 24 hours electricity and it was very quiet. It is owned by a group of catholic priests and it is simply amazing.

I remember the first time, I left home to the library. My parents were dumbfounded. It was after a week of me doing that that they knew how serious programming was to me. They stopped complaining for a while. I enjoyed my stay in the library I kept on going there even on Saturdays and Sundays.

After the semicolon incident, I was coding smoothly until I met another HELLFIRE!! This next hell was even worse than the hell from the semicolon. It was RECURSION. I was done with iterations: while, for loops and all that good stuff. I was now in a chapter called Methods. I understood how the methods work and how it can help prevent re-inventing the wheel. I was playing around with it and all was good and dandy. All of a sudden, I decided to do an exercise that needed recursion. In case you do not know what recursion is. In layman terms: recursion is the art of looping a method within itself. You simply say it is a method or function's form of iteration. If you have an easier way of defining it. You can share it with us as well.

Now, the problem, every time I run the code my laptop hung. As a newbie, I actually did not know why it was happening that way. I started checking the code and I could not see why it was happening that way. Mehn, I was frustrated again, My soul was BOILING. I kept on asking what is the meaning of all this. I noticed something though. In the console, the loop ran till infinity. It was at this moment, I had my first experience with INFINITY LOOPS.

Phew, that stuff can be annoying. I dug deeper into the code to see where the problem was, I could not find it. After about 36 hours, I tried to contact Kingsley to see if he could help me but I was not able to reach him. I later found at that he was in South Africa at the time. I was ALL ALONE until I met a very amazing friend. A friend almost all programmers have benefited from her good graces. I hereby welcome you all to our dear friend, STACK OVERFLOW.

I was asking various questions on google trying to find out why the code was not running properly. Google referred me to Stack Overflow and it was magnificent. It was the community, I so needed at the time. People were happy to help debug with you on your code issues. Fortunately for me, someone else had the exact problem as I and another person had answered his question. I saw what they did, then checked back at my code and saw my mistake. The mistake was SO STUPID, I started laughing out loud in the library and everyone turned and start looking at me. I immediately started saying sorry, sorry while smiling sheepishly.


I kept moving forward, for some reason, Arrays were actually easy for me to understand. I slid through that chapter and exercises like I was the King of Coding. It was later in my journey, I met other programmers who told me they still do not understand Arrays and Maps fully. I may be lucky there WHO KNOWS. I enjoyed the Array chapter. I did some amazing exercises and I even helped quite a few people to solve their Array issues on Stack Overflow and got the GREEN TICK for correct answer

I kept on moving majestically learning how to code. I started feeling PROUD and UNSTOPPABLE. At some point, I saw myself as the UNDERTAKER. I wrote codes and it ran without much debugging. I never knew my FALL OFF was very close at hand. Brothers and Sisters, OBJECTS AND CLASSES broke me to pieces.

I would pause sharing my experience here. It seems like I have written much already. If you were able to read all these up to this point Kudos to you. I would very much like to view your experiences as well. If you would like me to continue sharing, kindly indicate. Stay Safe, People

Regards

thanks for this story. Its giving me hope.
...
I'm currently using this pandemic holiday to study JavaScript.
And to say the truth, sometimes, I feel like I understand what I'm doing..
.....

later on, I feel like I'm just being foolishly impatient. like I'm rushing things...

....
right now, I'm studying loops and the for/in and for/of loops are becoming so confusing to me...
....

but I won't give up.
...

Please continue your story sir. thanks.

squash47:
thanks for this story. Its giving me hope.
...
I'm currently using this pandemic holiday to study JavaScript.
And to say the truth, sometimes, I feel like I understand what I'm doing..
.....

later on, I feel like I'm just being foolishly impatient. like I'm rushing things...

....
right now, I'm studying loops and the for/in and for/of loops are becoming so confusing to me...
....

but I won't give up.
...

Please continue your story sir. thanks.

Hang in there, it would all make sense some day.

@ultimatex

I love your story. Believe me, it's quite inspiring.

It goes on to show that Rome wasn't built in a day.

Lastly, are you in 042?

@squash47

Don't give up! And don't forget to practice, practice and practice! If possible, build a real world stuff cos you learn faster that way.

--

Nice one bro. Happy to have stumbled upon this.

Your boy
Codi

ConquerAll:
@ultimatex

I love your story. Believe me, it's quite inspiring.

It goes on to show that Rome wasn't built in a day.

Lastly, are you in 042?

@squash47

Don't give up! And don't forget to practice, practice and practice! If possible, build a real world stuff cos you learn faster that way.

--

I reside in Abeokuta, Ogun State at the moment.

Idoko Nicholas, I remember you from MBJ. You're doing well mate �

How can I become a freelancer and make money?

I want to learn further.

ultimatex:


I reside in Abeokuta, Ogun State at the moment.

Ok, thought you reside in 042.

Anyways, more grease to your efforts bro.

Thumbs up bro. The story day asif na me day write am.
No worry me to go join but na lappi day delay me

Bro pls... in summary how many months did u spend learning java before freelancing
I’m learning java also...in case of questions can I contact u?

ultimatex:
I would like to use this medium to appreciate all of you. Most especially those who indicated an interest in me to further share my experience as a Freelance Software Developer. I decided to share my experience here as a way to add a little spice to the Webmaster section of Nairaland.

It is definitely an honor for me to share further.
In case, you have not read Part 1.
Here is the URL: https://www.nairaland.com/5938926/nicholas-idoko-experience-freelance-software

My experience continues thus:

As I sat down in Kingsley's room I, in fact, felt very lucky because Kingsley did not shy away from sharing with me how much money he has made from developing websites for various people. It became clear to me that I was completely wasting my time watching movies day in day out. On a side note, I believe I am blessed, in the sense that it is easier for me to understand lessons so I didn't do much reading in school. I simply watched a lot of movies and managed to excel.

After a long conversation with Kingsley, I decided to learn Java. Looking back now, I would have been shouting ABORT MISSION, ABORT MISSION The reason for this would later come down in a later part of my experience.

I asked Kingsley if he could teach me how to program and he said time is the problem. I could remember his exact words. He said: "Nick, you know say I like woman and I no want make people think say I be nerd for this lodge. I would not have the time to teach you but I can guide you if you have any questions. In the meantime, start learning Java."

I took it upon myself to learn Java. The next day, I rushed to Douglas Market in Owerri in search of a book on how to learn Java programming. Prior to that, I saw a lot of ebooks. I just didn't feel comfortable learning with an e-book. Also, remember we were having power issues. I went around the market and to my surprise, I could not find any book on how to code Java. I felt a bit disappointed.

I went back to the lodge, packed my bags, and traveled home that same day. Home is Enugu State, coal city state, 042.

I had a mission for the ASUU strike of 2013. I MUST LEARN HOW TO CODE

I got home and in the early hours of the morning, I rushed to Ogbete Main Market. I asked around for bookshops and I remember a guy walked me all the way from the gate of the market to the exact shop where so many books on programming were stocked. I was wowed, In my head, I thought, it seems a lot of people have started learning to program here in Enugu. That there were this many books on Programming.

I requested a book on Java and the salesperson had like 10 various books. I decided to buy 'Introduction to Java Programming' by Y. Daniel Liang. The funny thing is I cannot even remember how much I bought that book and I can confidently say that that book was the foundation of me being a software developer to this day. If you have seen this book, you would know that the book is huge. It is like one of those Anatomy books medical students carry around. I was fearless and I was confident that I would tear this book apart.

I got home, I flipped through the book and all I could recognize was the first chapter of the book since that was all we did in school. The rest where jibberish. I remember when I flipped to Java Server Pages and Database and my head felt shooked. I started reading and practicing. It was fun sometimes and sometimes, it was utter hell. I remember the first time I made a mistake of not adding a semicolon. It drove me crazy, literally. I looked at the code snippet front and back and I could not see that there was no semicolon at the end of one my statement.

I could not sleep throughout that night, I slept for a while, woke up and looked at it, still nothing. At a point, I saw myself shouting at the laptop. , I would shout and I would beg the laptop to please run the code successfully. It was at this instance, that it occurred to me that a computer is thoroughly an idiot machine, GARBAGE IN GARBAGE OUT. One thing with me is I make sure I solve all the exercises in the book no matter how many they are and I can't just move to the next chapter without having to do that. I was so frustrated.

The way, I solved that problem was funny to me. Now, because I have looked at the code so much the picture of the code was embedded in my brain so deep that I could literally see the lines of code no matter what I am doing. One evening, a friend of mine, Tiger, his real name is Bright but we all call him Tiger or El Tigre. He came to my house with PlayStation for us to play Soccer. It was while playing the game and mind you he was beating me mercilessly in the soccer match that I discovered that I had missed a semicolon in the second line of the statement. I ran to my laptop, corrected it and the code ran successfully. It was at that moment, I PAID MY DUES AND RESPECT TO SEMICOLON .

I kept on practicing and moving forward to the next chapters. I was already an introvert but coding made matters worse. It was as if my level of "introvertness" was multiplied exponentially. All I did and wanted to do was code from morning till night. It got to the point that my parents became worried. My mom kept on complaining that I was spending so much time on the computer and I should be reading my books in case they call off the ASUU strike. My dad was complaining that I do not have time to do chores in the house again and I have neglected washing his car, clothes, and some other stuff, I did without bothering before.

I would not lie, I understood where they were coming from, I normally did all those things but as I dived deep into coding I gradually neglected everything and focused on just CODE. SLEEP. EAT. REPEAT. My life just became a cycle.

At that time, I have never been in LOVE but I started to understand what my friends do say about how being in LOVE can make your priorities singular and your mind distorted. I was IN LOVE with CODING.

The complaints from my parents started to increase and I started to bounce . I would wake up very early in the morning, clean up and go to the library, spend the whole day there till night. I would be back exhausted and sleep off I found an escape route. There was this small library in Enugu called Opus Dei, opposite UNEC. It was amazing, they had Air Conditioning, 24 hours electricity and it was very quiet. It is owned by a group of catholic priests and it is simply amazing.

I remember the first time, I left home to the library. My parents were dumbfounded. It was after a week of me doing that that they knew how serious programming was to me. They stopped complaining for a while. I enjoyed my stay in the library I kept on going there even on Saturdays and Sundays.

After the semicolon incident, I was coding smoothly until I met another HELLFIRE!! This next hell was even worse than the hell from the semicolon. It was RECURSION. I was done with iterations: while, for loops and all that good stuff. I was now in a chapter called Methods. I understood how the methods work and how it can help prevent re-inventing the wheel. I was playing around with it and all was good and dandy. All of a sudden, I decided to do an exercise that needed recursion. In case you do not know what recursion is. In layman terms: recursion is the art of looping a method within itself. You simply say it is a method or function's form of iteration. If you have an easier way of defining it. You can share it with us as well.

Now, the problem, every time I run the code my laptop hung. As a newbie, I actually did not know why it was happening that way. I started checking the code and I could not see why it was happening that way. Mehn, I was frustrated again, My soul was BOILING. I kept on asking what is the meaning of all this. I noticed something though. In the console, the loop ran till infinity. It was at this moment, I had my first experience with INFINITY LOOPS.

Phew, that stuff can be annoying. I dug deeper into the code to see where the problem was, I could not find it. After about 36 hours, I tried to contact Kingsley to see if he could help me but I was not able to reach him. I later found at that he was in South Africa at the time. I was ALL ALONE until I met a very amazing friend. A friend almost all programmers have benefited from her good graces. I hereby welcome you all to our dear friend, STACK OVERFLOW.

I was asking various questions on google trying to find out why the code was not running properly. Google referred me to Stack Overflow and it was magnificent. It was the community, I so needed at the time. People were happy to help debug with you on your code issues. Fortunately for me, someone else had the exact problem as I and another person had answered his question. I saw what they did, then checked back at my code and saw my mistake. The mistake was SO STUPID, I started laughing out loud in the library and everyone turned and start looking at me. I immediately started saying sorry, sorry while smiling sheepishly.


I kept moving forward, for some reason, Arrays were actually easy for me to understand. I slid through that chapter and exercises like I was the King of Coding. It was later in my journey, I met other programmers who told me they still do not understand Arrays and Maps fully. I may be lucky there WHO KNOWS. I enjoyed the Array chapter. I did some amazing exercises and I even helped quite a few people to solve their Array issues on Stack Overflow and got the GREEN TICK for correct answer

I kept on moving majestically learning how to code. I started feeling PROUD and UNSTOPPABLE. At some point, I saw myself as the UNDERTAKER. I wrote codes and it ran without much debugging. I never knew my FALL OFF was very close at hand. Brothers and Sisters, OBJECTS AND CLASSES broke me to pieces.

I would pause sharing my experience here. It seems like I have written much already. If you were able to read all these up to this point Kudos to you. I would very much like to view your experiences as well. If you would like me to continue sharing, kindly indicate. Stay Safe, People

Regards

please continue. sir,I am also a web developer and I will like to work with you