She Code Africa is a non-profit organization focused on celebrating and empowering young Girls and Women in Technology across Africa.
The She Code Africa mentoring program is a 3 months cohort-style, intensive program specifically designed to pair experienced individuals excelling in their specific tech fields with beginners in need of a guide and learning path while helping them grow in required ways in their career fields.
I first saw the call for application on Twitter around May 2020 but didn’t bother to apply when I saw the code requirement. I felt it was too much for me then.
I saw the call for application again in August and this time I applied, went through the whole interview process and boom I got in. My congratulatory email got on 16th September 2020 and I was so pleased and excited. We had an onboarding call on 25th September 2020 and the structure of the program was revealed. The mentorship program kicked off officially on 1st October 2020.
I was soon paired with a mentor and got to meet the other mentees under my mentor.
The first month was mainly about learning the basics and getting to know Mr. JavaScript, for some people it was very strange but for me, I have had a fair background already so catching up was easy. I mainly used javascript.info to learn and it is one javascript resource that I recommend because it is very detailed and easy to understand at the same time. I went over things like variables, data types, strict mode, interactions in Javascript(eg prompt, alert, confirm, etc), type conversion, basic operators, conditionals, loops, switch case, arrays, functions, and functions expression, arrow functions, objects, etc. Mainly the basics. Our first task for the month was to build a catalog with Javascript that had a toggle to show whether or not an item was available.
The second month was more intense. We have then introduced things like synchronous and asynchronous programming, functional programming, and closure. I also learned how to use REST APIs, how to use an environment variable to hide API keys. I found it a bit difficult to understand how APIs worked but as soon as I got it, I enjoyed using it to build several mini-projects.
The third month was mostly geared towards JavaScript for server-side using node js and express. I learned how to build an API. I also learned a bit about the Node package manager (NPM).
In conclusion, It has been a worthwhile experience and I learned how to learn by practicing and applying knowledge rather than just reading or watching videos, I also learned soft skills like communication skills, being a good team player, problem-solving, etc.
Thanks to my mentor and fellow mentees for making this experience worthwhile.
Thanks to She Code Africa for this platform to grow.
Here are some links to the projects I build during the course of this program:
Here is a link to an article I wrote about API:
Thank you for reading :)