After putting much thought into it, this blog post should probably have been my first one... Better late than ever yes? I'm not an expert and I don't claim to know it all but this is a blog post I'd have loved to see when I was just starting out as a beginner in tech. The world of tech is pretty wild and I was dropped into the whole melee, it was so difficult for me to navigate through for the longest time. Thank God I found my footing and I'd like people reading it to learn from my mistakes. If you're Nigerian like me, you must have observed the buzz around tech and how it's "Nigeria's New Oil" and you'd like to break into the world too. The first thing I'd like you to arm yourself with is a whole lot of confidence... You've got this! You can do all things you put your mind to do.

Next is Consistency, It is not an easy thing especially if you have no prior background. So for the longest time, I had so much difficulty understanding JavaScript and It messed with me mentally. I gave up many times but, I kept going back. I don't have it all figured out yet, but I'm much better than I was before.

Just like this picture, you'd need to keep watering yourself to grow and get better.

Now there are lots of different tech careers out there. Not every one of them requires coding so you can be rest assured. Also, Just so you know, coding is not so hard it's just a lot to learn and rules to follow. So under coding, we have Software Development which is the process of creating, designing, programming, documenting, and testing applications, frameworks, or other software components. Under It, we have Front-end a.k.a FE, Back-end a.k.a BE, and Full-stack

Front-end Development is the client-side development. i.e Everything the user sees first in their browser or application. You'd have to learn HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and later a JavaScript Framework. Here is something that grated my insides for the longest, Vanilla JavaScript is just normal JavaScript, nothing extra so don't be confused like I was. Also JavaScript and Java have no relation whatsoever. There are other JS frameworks like React, Angular, and Vue. There are lots of things to learn in JS that might seem daunting at first like fetching API's but it's not really all that.

Back-end Development is the server-side of development which is primarily focused on how the site works. Do you know when a site is down? that's back-end. It usually consists of three parts: A server, an application, and a database. Here are some of the languages you might need to learn :

NodeJs which is Javascript but the back-end JavaScript. there's also Python, Ruby, Go. Note: You don't have to learn all these languages cos in every language, there is a lot to learn. So it's better to learn one of them and be amazing at whichever you choose.

Full-stack Development is the combination of both FE and BE. A full-stack developer can develop both the client-side and the server-side.

Android/IOS Development is the process by which applications are created for devices running on the Android or IOS operating system. You might need to learn Flutter, Kotlin, Java, or C++

UI/UX Design is the process of creating user-friendly interfaces that enable users to understand how to use complex technical products. The designs you see on an app, That's a UI/UX designer's work. They make our screens look pretty. You'd need to learn how to use Figma, Adobe Xd, and some Photoshop apps.

There are other tech spaces such as:

Cloud Engineering

Data Science

Data Engineering

Artificial Intelligence

Cyber Security.

Some non Programming roles in tech include:

Technical writing

Product manager

Scrum master

Manual Tester

Project Manager

Business Analyst

Change/ Release manager

Defect manager

Product owner

Tech sales

Account manager

The list goes on... My advice is to research them all and know what you're capable of or you think suits you, there's always something for everyone. If you fail at one, you can start over with the next thing. Take your time. It would be tough, but don't give up. You've got this

Fighting!

If you'd like to start learning and you have no idea where to start from, there are a lot of resources on the Internet. I personally prefer video resources to text, so I'd recommend YouTube. There are amazing teachers like TheNetNinja, DevEd, Traverstymedia, JavaScriptTeacher. For Text Resources, you can check out FreeCodeCamp, W3schools, TheOdinProject, and many others. You could also enroll in free boot camps Like Zuri Training that happens annually or ShecodeAfrica strictly for ladies all over Africa. I've handed you what I think you should know... now go forth and succeed

Good luck!