Hello there.My name is Novuyo Sibonubuhle Tsambani. I am from a resort town called Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe.I decided to put up this blog so I can help someone who has the desire to get into Android development, or who is undecided about getting into development. Through this blog I will share my day to day challenges and problems I come across when developing apps and sharing solutions. Thus, welcome to my express train and I hope we all enjoy the ride!
So, how did it happen for me to become a developer?
I’d like to believe that there is a Higher Power that draws us to every moment in our lives for a particular reason. What we usually desire is not what we usually get. However it’s our mandate to figure out why we have been drawn to that particular place, profession or person. As Mark Twain said:
"There are two important days in our lives. The first is the day we are born and the second is figuring out why"
Finishing my high school at St James , Nyamandlovu and having studied Maths, Physics and Chemistry at A’ level I did not know what to study at varsity. Civil engineering was my first choice only because it sounds fancy, Lol! On learning what civil engineering was I then decided it wasn’t what I wanted to do. I knew I wanted to do some sort of engineering since Physics was one of my favourite subjects. My family convinced me to apply for Computer Science. I absolutely had no idea what Computer Science was and I just trusted them to know what’s best for me. Plus, it sounded like the next big profession so I went ahead and tried it out.
"There are two important days in our lives. The first is the day we are born and the second is figuring out why"
Finishing my high school at St James , Nyamandlovu and having studied Maths, Physics and Chemistry at A’ level I did not know what to study at varsity. Civil engineering was my first choice only because it sounds fancy, Lol! On learning what civil engineering was I then decided it wasn’t what I wanted to do. I knew I wanted to do some sort of engineering since Physics was one of my favourite subjects. My family convinced me to apply for Computer Science. I absolutely had no idea what Computer Science was and I just trusted them to know what’s best for me. Plus, it sounded like the next big profession so I went ahead and tried it out.
First year was hard😏. It was emotionally draining and I questioned myself if I would really survive in this program. Introduction to C was the worst. It felt like I was learning a totally different language, which is true but it was just too overwhelming for me. If we had a group assignment, I was the research lady as long as the questions had nothing to do with programming and will let others “boys” tackle those questions.
Internship came and I got to work at a local newspaper company as an IT Technician. Most support I was involved in was user support within the company. I did not enjoy the job which got me even more worried on what I will major on when I graduate. At this point I was thinking I can not write code and I hate support so I’d literally ask myself
“So Novuyo what are you going to do😕?”
Then the Technovation Challenge happened. Every year, Technovation challenges girls all over the world to build a mobile app that will address a community problem. Girls do not need to have programming experience to participate, and Technovation is free for any girl who wants to participate. I started first as a participant and with a group of four other girls and we named ourselves the SheCodes Zim group. You can learn more about us on our Facebook account (SheCodes.) Together, with our mentors we developed a healthcare application and we named it cCasualty.
The second year I volunteered to be a coach. As a volunteer coach l recruited a team of five girls. Together, we came up with an app idea, conducted user research, created a business plan, and built the app prototype for presentations to leaders from the technology and business sectors to judge and provide feedback.
You can read more about Technovation here https://technovationchallenge.org/. SheCodes never made it to the regionals. But that was beside the point. The Technovation challenge got us working with MITs app inventor. Developing apps became fun. I started growing interest as we were developing our own cCasualty. It was an intense hands on experience. We got exposed to a lot of hackerthorns and coding became fun. My other friends who were not into tech nicknamed me ‘Miss Droid’ because I became very involved in SheCodes. SheCodes joined NUST Enactus after Technovation and we continued growing our application.This is how I got into Android development.
My final year project was an android application. It was poorly designed and buggy but at least I was getting into it. After six months of looking for a job I landed a job as a Junior Android developer. It has been an amazing journey ever since. It’s a constant work in progress that needs tons of perseverance, learning capacity and resilience to keep on redoing it until you understand the concept. It’s almost three years now as an Android developer and learning with Andela and Google has exposed me to more things in Android.
So why the long story?
It all goes back to Mark Twain’s quote, whereby I think I’ve figured out why I am where I am. Why I was drawn to a field I barely knew at that time. This is my way of giving back to Nature. As a SheCoder one of our visions is to get more girls into the development space and we learn together and help each other grow. Thus, I’ve expanded my vision not only to inspire my fellow women folk, but anyone willing to get into Androiddevelopment will get my assistance through my stories, lessons and other educational material I will post from now going forward. I may have entered into this profession for the monetary value it may provide, but I’m staying in this profession for the vision I’ve stated above, and I do hope those willing to join me on this journey to set loose any doubts or fear they may have. It will soon change for the better.