Congratulations! You made it to the very first episode of our new monthly interview series, EverythingTech, a blog series where we spotlight stories from young people doing amazing things in Tech to inspire other young people.
Today, we'll be learning from Victor Abuka, a young full-stack software engineer. He'll be telling us how he started his tech journey, how he balanced school and tech, and the secrets that have gotten him to where he is today.
Let's get into it!
Abigail: Hi! We're so glad to have you here as our first guest at EverythingTech. Thank you for agreeing to do this. Tell us your name and what you do.
Abuka: My name is Victor Abuka. I like to think of myself as a tech professional. I am a full-stack software engineer. I deal majorly with Main Stack, which is Django, Express, React and Node, but I also write other programming languages like Python, Java, C and bash.
Abigail: I like the variety. Tell us, how did you develop an interest in tech?
Abuka: Okay. So, I used to play a lot of video games when I was younger, especially racing games. I even occasionally stole my mom's phone to download random games.
The day my dad came back home with a computer, the first thing on my mind was still games. But my attention gradually began to shift from merely playing games, to wondering what I could do to build the kind of games I loved. That was when I first learned about programming. I was still a clueless primary school student at the time, so the only thing I could do was try to recreate bash that I found on Youtube.
Abigail: That's a very interesting and relatable experience there. So, how would you say your tech journey started?
Abuka: My tech journey started when I joined the children’s media department in my church. We had a leader who was the software engineer of a very popular bank at that time. I just randomly indicated my interest and told him how I used to write batch scripts. He told me I needed to learn CSS and took it upon himself to teach me and everyone else on the team, after church services. He was godsent. When I got to secondary school, I was a boarder and because gadgets were not allowed in school, I did not continue learning until after JSS3. You know after JSS3, we have this long holiday.
Abigail: Yeah.
Abuka: During that long break, this same media team leader recommended to my parents that I enroll in an engineering program at National Institute of Information Technology [NIIT]. We made inquiries and I started learning Microsoft and advanced Excel, which was more like a data analysis course. I completed the Excel course and started learning logic building and effective problem-solving. This is where you learn how to write algorithms and pseudo codes, but my learning stopped shortly after, because the holiday ended. I developed so much interest already and didn’t want to stop, so I convinced my dad to allow me continue learning during my long vacations until I finished secondary school.
Unfortunately this 'off and on' learning made me lag behind some of my classmates that were learning programming on their own. So, I decided to go the extra mile during my long vacations, to get ahead. I started learning Python, HTML, CSS and even JavaScript. I told myself that I would focus fully on programming after secondary school.
So, I started tech fully and professionally when I graduated from secondary school in 2020, that's why whenever people ask how long I’ve been in tech, I tell them 2020, but in actual sense, I started long before then.
I finished learning Python and started a lot of projects, and then the opportunity to join HNG and Switch Internships came out. I applied for both of them, ran them concurrently, and ended up a finalist.
I threw myself into my job at Newton as a software developer. My team was given some designs and told to build out the whole app. I worked as a backend engineer on the team. When we turned in the project, the client was impressed and decided to retain me as a full time staff.
The interesting thing is that when I went into HNG, I was a backend developer but I only knew Python. I didn't know anything about Django or Flask, I learned it during the internship. The speed at which I learned surprised me because it was a kind of startup environment. At that time, I felt like it was after my life but looking back now, it was very interesting. I also realized the importance of joining communities. What I experienced in HNG was community-like, and it made me see how communities can help you grow.
In asking questions here and there, and looking for resources online, I landed on the Cs50 course at Harvard. It's an Introduction to Programming free course and you only pay for it if you want a certificate. I took the whole course which took me three months. The course helped me gain a better understanding of all the technical jargon I was hearing up and down, and how they fit together. I kept learning. I learned C, SQL, and Java. I learned about data structures and algorithms. As I was learning, I was building a capstone project. So after I learned a language, I used it to do a project. It was on one of the capstone projects that I decided to start building mobile apps.
Abigail: You didn’t mention it in the introduction, but I know you’re a student. Tell us how it has been combining your tech life with school?
Abuka: So I’m a student of electrical engineering at the University of Ibadan. I'm currently in 200 level.
I was able to maximize my learning while waiting to write my post-utme exam in 2021, and while waiting for resumption after the exam.
It was during this period that I interned and learned the Cs50 course at Harvard.
Entering into school, I needed to find my footing. It was in the university community that I learned about the Google Developer student clubs. So I joined the groups for Lagos and Ibadan. I got information about lots of opportunities, including ALX. I was interested and started learning although my parents were against combining it with school.
I already had a community of friends from the software engineering school I attended, so I reached out to them to gather information about ALX. So there’s this thing in ALX, where after learning a language, you go ahead to develop a capstone project. There was this guy who developed a quiz app with React. I was fascinated and went ahead to learn React with YouTube Videos and books I could find.
Learning is easy for me with YouTube videos and books, but I realized a lot of people struggle with these things, that's why I started a YouTube channel. The YouTube videos gained a lot of traction, but I had to take them down because there was a copyright claim on them.
Another thing that helped me scale through ALX was the ASUU strike. Since I didn't have to bother about classes or keeping up grades in school, I was able to give it my full attention. I also picked up cloud engineering, in addition to the software engineering I had already started with ALX.
I can’t exactly say I was able to balance ALX with my academics but I gave them attention as time and urgency demanded. I finished cloud engineering with ALX and was added to a room where I could connect with other people and first-class opportunities.
Along the line, a friend introduced me to Udemy where I could learn at my own pace, and it was sort of freedom-like for me because I was no longer under the pressure that came with keeping up with ALX. I finished ALX in March. It was a breath of fresh air and I started looking out for jobs. I later got a contract job as a software engineer in a start-up. The Udemy courses I took were really helpful in my job, so it made me purchase more courses to learn at my own pace.
I would also like to emphasize the importance of community. My journey with ALX helped me meet a bunch of wonderful people.
Abigail: If you could go back in time, and have a conversation with your newbie tech self, what would you tell him?
Abuka: I would tell him to focus on one thing and gain mastery of one, before branching out into other things.
Abigail: If I wanted to start a career in software engineering, where would you advise I start?
Abuka: Evaluate your goals. How good do you want to be? If you want to get started in tech, you need to take an introductory course. I’d advise you to take a course in logic building and effective problem-solving, and an Introduction to Programming course.
Abigail: Wow! Thank you for those wholesome and detailed answers. I thought this interview would only show people how to start a tech journey as a software engineer, but it's been very inspiring and interesting, to see how your small, random intentional actions accumulated over time.
Thank you from everybody at the IntentionalYou community, and everyone else who will learn from your story and get inspired from reading this as well!
Abuka: Thank you for the opportunity to share my story. It made me very happy.
Abigail: That's a wrap guys!
Did you enjoy this? Did you learn something that will be useful to your journey? Who would like us to interview next? You can send a reply and tell us we want to hear from you.
Stay Intentional.
Connect with Abuka HERE
PS: Our next mail will be in two weeks, and it will be with a truckload of opportunities that we hope will bring you closer to your goals, but until then, help the IntentionalYou team serve you better by filling out this feedback form. It will only take a minute.
This is refreshing, and a most read for young people going into tech.
Well done, Abigail 👏
I enjoyed this and look further to reading more of it.
Thank you Abigail
Thank you Abuka