In this article, I will be sharing my transition into tech and my experience as a back-end developer intern at Walulel Ghana.

The Breakthrough

I am a Political Science graduate from the University of Ghana. After my National Service during the Covid-19 time, I had no job. I applied to lots of companies and tried different things including the military. A family friend who got to know me when I was jobless encouraged me to apply for a software development training he came across, organized by MEST Africa. I applied and got accepted, and trust me those 6 weeks in the program weren’t easy for me. From borrowing laptops to giving up several times because the things I was learning weren’t familiar to me at all, I still managed to complete them. The family friend became a mentor. He challenged me in so many ways I wasn’t going to accept defeat. I later got the opportunity to study data science at the Ghana Tech Lab. At this point I felt I have found my passion, I continued analyzing data even after completion but unfortunately, I couldn’t get an internship opportunity to use my skills.

Upon the back and forth of getting to know which aspect of Tech I was interested in, I heard about the Developers in Vogue accelerator program for software development which was one year with an internship. It was the best opportunity for me to go into tech full-time. The eight months of tutorials were incredibly full of challenges. At this point in my life, I had no option but to give up. I was consistent and determined. During the training, we were introduced to HTML, CSS, JavaScript, React, Node, Express, Mongo Database, etc. I built numerous projects with JavaScript which can be found on my GitHub, and this led to my love for back-end development. I developed an interest in the logic and structure of building an API. I could sit behind my laptop thinking and writing logic which I called “Concoctions “ 😂😂 because sometimes I would add code together and it worked as I wanted always marvelled me. Aside from the technical skills, we had a series of Mentor-ship sessions on topics like preparing for technical interviews, structuring your technical portfolio, etc.

During my training program, I was reached out to by Kafui Yevu, who advised me to register on Kraado to get a mentor. I got registered and assigned to a mentor. That was the best thing that happened to me on this journey. I have had a series of sessions with my mentor Joojo Imbeah on topics that have helped elevate my life. With his help, I have learned about conflict resolution, Leadership skills, and communication and also improved my confidence level as I always had doubts about my capabilities. He continues to be the best person who has dedicated his time to helping me grow in the tech field.

After my training, I got an internship with Walulel Ghana. Starting an internship as a Back-end developer brought a lot of mixed feelings. Scary as it was, I was also anxious and curious. I kept questioning if I was ready for this challenge. It was my first internship opportunity to work with a company after my transition from Political Science to Tech. I spoke to other developers who told me how they made lots of mistakes when they started, and with time, it got better. These words made me feel a little calmer.

The Interesting Part

Plot twist, during my software development training, we used JavaScript for everything we did, which made me quite comfortable with the language. To my surprise, I was going to use PHP and Laravel for writing APIs. That even got scarier, and the thought of learning a new programing language crippled me. I got assigned to a Senior Developer as a Supervisor Alhassan Yakubu, who has been a great help in my internship and tech journey.

I started to learn PHP and Laravel frameworks. I read the documentation, and knowing that I understand concepts better by building projects, I started a Book App Project. My supervisor explained most of the topics to me, which we implemented in the project. So once I understood a particular concept, I implemented it in the personal project. I kept doing this to solidify my understanding. One thing that helped in understanding these concepts was curiosity.

Curiosity led me to API documentation. I got a task to read about Swagger and write notes on it. As I was at it, I tried my hands on Swagger Editor, which I used to write my first API documentation of a Restaurant Review Application API I built with Laravel and hosted on Heroku.

Here is the link to the documentation. I also made it easier to consume the API using Zuplo API documentation.

Now, you’ve probably heard of automated testing. In case you haven’t, it involves writing code to test the code you’ve written to ensure it works as expected. I started reading about it because my supervisor said it’s a good practice, and what’s more, writing tests before writing code is the best, referred to as Test Driven Development (TDD). After I went through the Laravel documentation and watched some YouTube tutorials, I decided to write tests for my Restaurant Review API. It was interesting because I had to write my first passing test. Guess what happened, my tests kept failing, and I had to restructure my code. I will say that the tests exposed my logic which made me uncomfortable. I had faith in my code because I manually tested the API endpoints on Postman and everything was working. At this point, all I could think of was, “Who tests the tests”? Eventually, after refactoring my code, my tests passed. Hooray!!

Learning Test Driven Development (TDD) got me started with a new project, Events API. With this project, I wrote my tests and then wrote my code to pass those tests, which were a bit challenging but also quite interesting. In this project, I learned and implemented Caching and Newsletter Subscriptions using the Mailchimp API.

Reflections

This internship has been a great learning experience. There were many lessons I gained from this experience, and some are.

• Code Quality
• Personal Documentation

Code Quality

Code quality measurement sometimes depends on company standards. Therefore there is no one way to measure the quality of a code. On account of this, some key metrics cut across companies. These are readability, scalability, re-usability, maintainability, etc. A good code should be easy to read, bugs free, documented, well-tested, etc. I started learning the importance of code quality through code review and building more projects.

Personal Documentation

When I started the internship, my supervisor advised me to write concepts I study along the way. I didn’t know the importance of this until I started getting imposter syndrome. I revisited my notes to remind myself of everything I had learned, which reminded me of how far I had come and gave me a little morale to keep going. It also serves as my own ‘tech diary’.

Conclusion

During this internship, not only have I learned how to write better code, but I also had the opportunity to work with a great team of amazing developers who have had an impact on my development as a software developer. I have learned more about teamwork, communication, etc. that will take me through my journey in tech. I am grateful to Walulel for the opportunity to grow and contribute to the company.

Developers in Vogue, I appreciate the impact you had on my life. You made a dream that seemed impossible to be possible. Thank you.

Lastly, to the tech Community, Mentors, Family and Friends, I say thank you for supporting me in this journey.

Final Submission

Transitioning to any field is difficult. In any area you want to transition into, there are some things to do to make the journey exciting and successful.

• get a mentor in that field
• get a role model
• join the community in the field
• be consistent
• show people what you are doing: this could be posting your work on social platforms
• do extra to stand out

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The writer, Racheal Kuranchie is a software engineer. She is currently a backend engineer at Eggseed LLC. With a wide range of interests, she enjoys solving problems and writing about tech-related topics.