My TIIDELab Experience 2.0

Success does not happen by chance. It takes dedication, sustained effort, trying, learning, sacrifice, and, most importantly, a love of what you are doing or learning to do. -Pele

I can’t believe it’s already been a month since I wrote my TIIDELab Experience 1.0.
Since the last time I shared my experience with you, a lot has transpired in the program, especially since we all had our team projects assigned to us. It’s been an emotional month for me because I have to leave my family for two months to focus on the responsibilities at hand, the details of which will be discussed with you in this article.

CodeAsk, My Team, and I
Starting with my personal family in the cohort, data pirates has been my home and my team members; my siblings. My team lost a team member who opted to leave the fellowship because he could no longer meet the program’s standards. Raymond Olugu was a key member of my team, and he left just when we needed him the most. However, team Data Pirates is a collection of tenacious individuals that are dedicated to doing their best regardless of the obstacles, thus the fantastic work continues as we are able to produce a beautifully prepared software requirements specification and functional requirements documents.

CodeAsk

Our project, named CodeAsk, is a question and answer platform for developers. It will be a go-to location for software developers and programmers who may require support and/or clarification in their code or programs whenever they encounter a stumbling block in their work or career.
CodeAsk will collaborate with sites such as stackoverflow, quora, and github, allowing for their integration into CodeAsk. The idea is that whatever solution or response is available on all of these sites combined will be accessible on CodeAsk in addition to what it will have on its personal database. Isn’t it incredible?

You will never have to leave our platform to find all of the information you require.

As much as I am thrilled that my team and I get to work on such huge project, being the team leader has been extremely stressful, exhausting, and demanding. Of course, it has also extended my horizons and widened my perspective. For example, because I will be functioning as the project manager, I had to quickly learn how to utilize Trello for management. I also developed a project timeline using a gantt chart, used a survey form platform, deliberated on survey questions, and devised means to gather results.

The Fellowship so far

Tiidelab is upholding its reputation for providing the best in the world of software engineering fellowships. It’s one intense activity after another, from CCAT to Coding Challenge, just to get us ready for the future ahead of us.

So far, we’ve completed one level of coding challenge, which consists of two rounds of coding challenges and one interview with a software company picked by the Tiidelab Management Team.
This month’s challenge saw four remarkable individuals emerge as victors, with two of them already receiving internship placements after the fellowship.

This is a huge motivation for me, and I’m doing everything I can to better understand the challenges and win the challenge.

Our Mentors

“A mentor is someone who sees more talent and ability within you, than you see in yourself, and helps bring it out of you.” — Bob Proctor

We were allocated mentors this month, and I must admit that I was looking forward to this component of the program. Dr. Bashir Muhammed is my mentor. He is the Computational Systems Research Engineer at Berkeley Lab USA, and I am excited to learn from him.

Mr Kenny and Javascript

Mr Ibrahim Lukman has been the official javascript instructor for the Tiidelab Fellowship program since its inception, and he has taught over 100 fellows who are doing fantastic things in the tech world. Mr Kenny is soft-spoken, patient, and attentive; these characteristics have made his teaching seamless, and fellows have been able to understand both his virtual courses and his tutorial videos.
Personally, he has been quite helpful to me, and I can’t begin to count how many times I’ve called out to him when I’m confused on a subject. Despite his hectic schedule, his rapid response is remarkable.

I’ve already discovered a mentor in Mr. Kenney, and I plan to officially ask him to be my mentor after the program; I’d like to learn more from him and correctly embrace some of his personal attributes.

Javascript

So far, we’ve learned about javascript concepts.

• Conditional statements
• Switch case
• Loop
• Function
• Closure
• Array
• Object

As I previously stated, the classes were interesting, and we worked on a variety of assignments, including writing a program for a bank ussd prompt.

To illustrate my mastery of some of the javascript concepts, I published an article on conditional statements using switch cases on Medium and Hashnode. I’m currently working on a function and plan to write on loop.

Despite its complexity, I find javascript easier to learn than CSS; I’ll let you know if my perspective changes as we progress through the course.

My Accomplishments
So far, my experience has been positive, and I am working to improve both my technical and soft skills. This month,

• I learnt how to utilize Trello to manage projects.
• I authored Chapter 2 of the software requirements for CodeAsk.
• I wrote an article about conditional statements on hashnode.
• On behalf of my Team , I gave a peer learning presentation on javascript Array.

Permit me to leave my pen here for the month, with the promise to pick it up again this time next month, Hopefully.

Thank you for taking the time to read this article, and may God bless you as you hit the like button.
Cheers

Temitope Hamzat
Tekherbalist