Dodging Lectures to Code: How I found Programming

In August 2013, I made my way to Kyambogo University for the orientation week to kick off my 4 year journey towards a Telecommunications engineering degree. As a child from a small school, I was scared that it was going to be hard competing against children from bigger schools, but I also knew that the fact that we were all in the same class now meant that I deserved to be there.

Three years in, I knew that something was off, we studied a couple of things about electricity, electronics, mobile and TV networks. Some of them clicked but didn't resonate with me. It was my only chance that I knew of to make it professionally and there was no way I could explain to my parents or anyone else that this isn't what I wanted to do, quitting wasn't an option.

During my second and third years, I had the chance to train with Huawei Technologies who was the leading Vendor of telecom equipment on sites In Uganda and MTN who was the leading service provider getting exposure to various sectors of the Industry. The working conditions and the nature of the work (monotonous in some sectors) didn't resonate with me either.

During one of the weeks at MTN, I trained with the VAS team where I was introduced to PHP and MySQL. We were given a task to make a Password meter to learn about PHP. I had been learning how to code so this was easy for me. Our handler asked me to create a database of common passwords and integrate the app with the database. This was an eye opener for me about how web apps worked, I couldn't stop thinking about the password meter I had built and after that I worked towards making it a proper web application.

When I went back to University, dodging lectures became a daily habit as I spent most of the time building websites in PHP and designing circuits with Arduino and PIC micro controllers and programming them with C/C++/Arduino for students and people who approached me. This not only helped me make some money for upkeep but also I could see my self doing similar work in the future. My final year project was a learning platform which featured course material upload, discussions, lecture video and tutorial uploads and messaging.

My grades dropped in the last 3 semesters but I didn't care that much. I knew it was high enough to help me stay in first class but most importantly I was convinced that I had found something that I really loved working on. There was something exciting about writing text and seeing things happen on a screen or in circuits that made me dare for more.

After defending my final year project and failed attempts to make a business out of it but with a burning desire to work in Software and mixed feelings about working in the Telecommunications Industry in Uganda, a hard question was there in my face: How do I enter the industry without a formal computer science degree and no industry connections?

The answer came crawling in June, in form of a text message from a friend. A tech startup was hiring. They didn't care about degrees or experience. Their rejection rate was higher than Harvard. And they only interviewed in Python - a language I had never written a single line of code in.

And It was only three days to the deadline...

Read what happened next: Fast and Curious: Learning Python in 72 Hours for a Job in Tech