Becoming a Full Stack Web Developer in 2 Weeks

My journey to becoming a web developer started after I graduated from the University. I decided to dive into IT after I had a business idea, that I needed to see through. I started with just the everyday knowledge of how the world wide web works.

Starting off was not easy. To begin, I needed to make the decision of whether to practice automotive engineering that I had been taught for 5 years, OR to drop it entirely and learn something that is entirely new to me. After I eventually made the decision (as you might have guessed, I went for the “something new”) , NYSC called and the youth had to obey the clarion call.

Learning during National Youth Service was spasmodic and very unstructured, so let us fast-forward to now (3 months after the service year)… After our hired developer built a terrible application for us, no thanks to our inexperience, my team thought that it was time we all pressed pause on our inglorious cause and better ourselves by becoming experts. So we all parted ways temporary to reconvene when we have indeed become experts.

“…Before you are 30, work for a good boss.” — Jack Ma

We all went on our ways looking for good bosses to work for. That was when I discovered Andela Fellowship by Andela in June 2018.

Growth Mindset

You might be wondering: This was supposed to be an article about how you can become a Full-stack Developer in two weeks (not about me or Growth Mindset). You are absolutely right.

The truth is: becoming a full-stack developer in two-weeks have everything to do with GROWTH MINDSET! It is the capacity to believe that we can become anything we want to be by just believing that we have the capacity to acquire everything we need to achieve our purpose. It might be information, resources, skills, etc.

Someone that have the growth mindset believes that the human mind is like a fluid, which can take the shape of any container you put it inside. That the mind can be flexible enough to learn anything that you need to learn to become anything that you want to be.

That is what I believed when I set out to work on the boot-camp challenge (part of Andela Pre-fellowship activity) which required me to build a full-stack application that works similar to StackOverflow (with little knowledge of how back-end applications work). I set off, believing that as I dabble through the process, that I will be made better by the challenges and obstacles that I might find along the way.

When we focus on the process not the endpoint (paradoxical because I had to create API endpoints, and I needed to focus on them); But really, when we focus on growth and not on the current state, or just the desired state, and by continuously iterating and making ourselves better with each step we take, we can attain heights we may not have known that we could.

This was how I became a full-stack developer in two weeks. You can add “rookie” behind full-stack, but that is totally fine.