Earlier this year, a friend of mine said to me, “Guy, everyone is coding oo, shey you dey dull yourself?” (meaning: everyone is coding, don’t be left out). A few weeks later, I picked up interest in several programming languages like HTML, CSS, python, scala, ruby, java. I felt like I had superpowers. Oh well, you can already imagine that I still can’t code 😬.
Learning how to code is a daunting task. One that is usually fueled by passion, consistency, patience, anger, breaking keyboards, and most times, sleepless nights. All these are the unseen efforts a software developer puts into their craft. Unfortunately, this is not a skill for everyone and most people realize this later.
There are a lot of careers in tech that people can pursue that don’t involve coding or being a software developer. Some of them include being a User Interface Designer, User Experience Designer, Software Quality Tester, Growth Analyst, Product Management, Tech Support analyst, Customer success etc.
I have colleagues who, unlike me, can spend hours on their computers trying to debug codes, or even solve problems using code but I can’t, and this just boils down to preference. I would rather spend hours making research on products to be built or design the actual product to be built.
It may surprise you to know that not every software developer or engineer can on their own build a product and put it out there for use. A lot of steps and processes are involved, and it requires a team which usually comprises of User Experience Designers, Software Quality Testers, Product Managers, etc.
In my case, it took this Covid-19 lockdown to figure out what I really had an interest in and if I was to give a suitable response to my friend today, it would definitely be, “Guy, I no dey dull my self ‘cos no be everybody suppose dey code” (meaning: I’m not left out of anything, because not everyone is supposed to code).
