Life wasn't pleasant to me after high school. Things changed. I had to now survive on my own. Although I was given food at home, it wasn't the kind of meal that will satisfy your hunger. That was telling me to get a job to start taking care of myself, but I had other plans. I started attending a graphic design school to be able to do something on my own. Mind you; I love computers. I created my first email at primary three, and I started using a desktop computer early because my big brother brought one home. Oh, I never mentioned my big brother.

I started working. I was a cafe attendant for few months at Dansoman, a suburb of Accra. It was great; I also loved the job because I got the time to study online and meet new people and connect. However, it was suitable for a while, and it started becoming tedious, so I wanted something different. So I quit and stayed home for some time. Then, I got another job, another cafe attendant job. I mentioned my previous cafe attendant job was tedious, so why get another one? This one was a bit different because my boss was a database manager, and I wanted to learn database management. He is one of the best database managers in the country, and I wanted to learn from him.

This new job was a blessing in disguise. Why? That is where I found my passion in what I do today. My boss scheduled time to teach me database management, it was good, and I loved it. I loved every bit of it. He taught me PostgreSQL, creating a database, querying a database, and creating a UI for the interface. I didn't advance my studies, but I learned a lot that I could use to start a career. I kept learning from my boss until one day, a colleague of his came into the picture. He had a couple of developer friends who came around. Most of them are in Tech, and they were all good.

One of his friends, a software developer, came around to work with my boss on a project, but unfortunately for him, my boss wasn't available, so he had to wait for my boss. That's where it all began. He was developing a website, a friendly interface, and I fell in love with what he was doing. I asked him kindly if he could teach me, but he said he was pretty occupied, so I can start watching a tutorial on youtube. I was somewhat lost because all I used youtube for was to watch music videos. I never knew I could also study on youtube. I started immediately, and I found the best channel on youtube to start learning HTML and CSS. It was great, and I started falling in love with it. I spent much time on youtube learning and understanding what I was learning. I slept less and studied more.

Day in day out, I spent much time practising and working on dummy projects. I did this for a year straight. I also forgot to mention I quit my job at some point to focus on website development. In 2014, I got my first project, a website project for a hotel. I worked on it within a week, and the client was happy with the work. He decided to recommend me to some of his close friends. Fast forward to 2016; I got my first job as a website developer at WopeDigital. I worked there for a year and after decided to leave and move on. I continued my studies, furthered into studying something different. I started with Javascript.

Learning Javascript wasn't easy; it took me a couple of years to grasp the concept of the language. After that, I started using HTML, CSS and Javascript to work on projects. In 2018, I got another web development job, and this one was way better than the first. I learnt a lot on the job. I made lots of errors, fix my errors and learn new things each time. I met some people who were good in the field, and I learnt new things from there. I started learning Javascript frameworks (React and Vue), used them for projects as well. I am always grateful about this company because they allowed me to make errors and fixed them without judging me. Everyone there was supportive; although we didn't have many developers, the available ones and the non-developers were great. We came to the office as a family. In 2019, I got another gig from a startup company where I work currently. I was to develop their website and a dashboard to be used by their clients.

Complete Farmer makes farming a lifestyle by providing cutting-edge technological farming protocols and innovations with a unique business model and logistics that revolutionise farming and create an end-to-end digital marketplace. Working on their project was huge for me because I could boast about working on their projects. After the projects, they liked the projects and wanted me to work with them. I enjoyed working at my previous company because I had the freedom to work on other projects and study. I was free to do many things, so why should I leave to join a startup? I decided to work with them part-time for a while to get used to them and join the company.

I finally decided to join the company full time in 2020. My old boss never liked the idea of me leaving the company, but it was about time I moved on to a different company to grow as a developer and a person. Moving to Complete Farmer was swift and easy because I knew everyone in the company, and I was already a worker. I began developing software used internally, and we improved upon all the software we developed over time. I am the Senior Frontend Developer at Complete Farmer and ensure that everything frontend is up to date and what a user will love to use. In addition, I oversee a couple of National Service Personnel who became software developers at the company. They're doing well, and they keep improving daily. I am proud to have impacted some knowledge and made sure to give back to society.

Being a software developer is a pleasant experience until you start facing burnout problems. But, then, burnout is not an enjoyable experience at all. It steals away your passion for the job, and it takes away your happiness. It takes away almost everything you enjoy doing. In part one, I mention work is my only hobby and my best friend, and I guess that's why burnout takes away my happiness. I am here now, with the family drama, life drama and work drama, looks like I have been depressed about a hundred times already this year. I become depressed almost every week. A lot happens, and no one cares to know or cares about you, the person. Everyone cares about what will benefit them. My work cares about my input, my family cares about money, and life cares about my movements.

It's been hell for me these couple of months. I have been struggling to leave this place, but the more I try, the more it worsens. I hope I can one day find the strength to escape this horrible place.

In the next part, I will discuss what happened in my love life and what's currently going on.

How I got here pt.2: The Software Development Journey

One thing I haven't spoken much about is how I got here. How did I get here? Do I have the passion for what I am doing now, or was it just for the money? Do I want to continue or quit? How is it? Am I happy doing what I am doing? These are all questions I sometimes ask myself. I groan a lot about how tired I am as a person, not as a software developer. I have tried quitting, but I can't. I want to try new things, have unique hobbies, but nothing seems to work. But wait, do I even have a hobby? No, I have no hobbies, I do not have many friends. My only true friend and hobby is my work, So I pour all my frustration and concerns into my work.

Considering so many factors, I am glad to be where I am today. It wasn't easy getting here. All the sleepless nights, the times I spent learning, the friends I lost on the way, departing from home, losing my family and the pains I have harboured within me for long kept me going, and now they keep haunting me day after day. They keep coming back to me, they keep catching up, and I feel lost as a person. Life hasn't been easy for me. I go forward one step and come three steps backwards. I tend to be happy on the outside, but within, I cry always.

All began when my parent divorced; that was the saddest day of my life. I was 2years old when my parents divorced. Although I was a kid and didn't know what was going on today, I sometimes shed tears when I think of it. I went through a lot. I had to stay with my father's sister for five years, and she treated me as if I am a slave. As a kid, I had to wake up very early, do my house chores, and help her also fry Puff Puff (Bofrot) before I go to school. I was a brilliant kid; with all that went on, I still performed well in school. All these happened every day for 5years while staying with her; this wasn't pleasant for me as a kid. A lot happened to me as a kid, and they keep coming back to haunt me.

So, I decided to inform my mom about it when she visited me one Saturday morning. She wasn't happy about it the situation, so she decided to go with me that day. I was pleased knowing I am leaving to a place where my mom will treat me as a young prince. So, leaving my aunty's house, I was thrilled because I knew my mom wouldn't treat me wrong.

I stayed with my mom for a week or two, then one Sunday afternoon, my dad showed up at my mom's house. He wasn't happy with me staying with my mom. According to my dad, he says my mom travels a lot, and she won't make time to take care of me. As I grew up, I realised my dad wasn't telling a lie. So I had to go with my dad to stay with him the very same day.

Staying with my dad wasn't fun; it was more than hell for me, not because of my dad but my stepmom. She made my life a hell of a journey. I started selling on the street of Accra as a kid. I had to do worse things as a kid, and I was treated differently from her kids. But in the end, I learnt a lot from my stepmom that's helped shaped my life growing up. I can cook, clean my room, stay tidy always. One thing I had come to love about my stepmom when I grew up is, she prays for me a lot. Whenever I call her, she prays for me, advises me, and she's happy with where I am today. She never asks me for anything, and she's always happy for me.

Unlike my mom, my stepmom has been the best mom to me when I got older. I wish my stepmom treated me the same way as she treats me now when I was younger.

My life story isn't fun, and I wish no child will ever experience this kind of life growing up. But, what I went through made me stronger and shaped my life well. Sometimes, I am grateful because I wouldn't have known how my life would have played out if I continued staying with my mom.

In the next part, I will discuss how I got into software development and all the dilemmas I faced on my journey to becoming a software developer.

How I got here pt.1: The Childhood

Framework wars have been on the verge for quite sometime now. I certainly do not want to be caught in them. I sometimes don’t know what to learn or what framework to use for my next project. Bootstrap, Foundation Zurb, TailwindCSS, Material CSS, few to mention are great CSS frameworks with a lot of features and good for prototyping. They make Front-end developers work much easier but sometimes a bit difficult to handle them. To handle them? Yes, I said they make prototyping easier and also our works fairly simple but sometimes you might have to learn new terms to be able to use them, on top of all the CSS terms we know.

Coming to javascript, there are 3 top frameworks that makes our work very simple and easy but also comes with their headaches. Angular, React and Vue are the top 3 frameworks as at 2019 (Some may say React and Vue are libraries, true but lets just stick to the term framework for now).

Angular is developed and maintained by Google, React is developed and maintained by Facebook and Vue is developed by Evan You in 2014 ( an ex Google engineer). Over the last two years, Vue has seen a substantial shift in popularity, even though it doesn’t have the backing of a large company. Later he found out people starting forking the project on Github, he got excited about it and started working on it. Vue is the mixture of Angular and React yet very simple and easy to learn. I am not saying Angular and React are difficult to learn but if you made a search about the learning curves of these frameworks, you’ll find out that Vue is the most simplest followed by React and then Angular.

Angular is a complete framework and has everything you might need for your project.

Angular’s created to be used alongside with Typescript. And has exceptional support for it.

Angular-language-service — which allows intelligence and autocomplete inside of component external HTML template files.

New features like a generation of Angular based npm libraries from CLI, generation, and development of WebComponents based on Angular.

Detailed documentation that allows getting all necessary information for the individual developer without asking his colleagues. However, this requires more time for education.

One-way data binding that enables singular behavior for the app which minimized risks of possible errors.

MVVM (Model-View-ViewModel) that allows developers to work separately on the same app section using the same set of data.

Dependency injection of the features related to the components with modules and modularity in general.

Structure and architecture specifically created for great project scalability

Variety of different structures(Injectables, Components, Pipes, Modules etc.) makes it a bit harder to learn in comparison with React and Vue.js, which have an only “Component” in mind.

Relatively slower performance, according to different benchmarks. On the other hand, it can be easily tackled by utilizing so-called “ChangeDetectionStrategy”, which helps to control the rendering process of components manually.

Companies that use Angular: Companies that use Angular: Microsoft, Autodesk, MacDonald’s, UPS, Cisco Solution Partner Program, AT&T, Apple, Adobe, GoPro, ProtonMail, Clarity Design System, Upwork, Freelancer, Udemy, YouTube, Paypal, Nike, Google, Telegram, Weather, iStockphoto, AWS, Crunchbase.

React is a javascript library, which means it doesn’t have all the functionalities or features Angular has, yet its very powerful and does whatever Angular do. Since React is a library, you might want to get to libraries or add-on packages whenever you need some new features. They do not have a state management, you need to get a third party state management tools such as Redux, Mobx, etc

Easy to learn, thanks to its simple design, use of JSX (an HTML-like syntax) for templating, and highly detailed documentation.

Developers spend more time writing modern JavaScript, and less time worrying about the framework-specific code.

Extremely fast, courtesy of React’s Virtual DOM implementation and various rendering optimizations.

Great support for server-side rendering, making it a powerful framework for content-focused applications.

First-class Progressive Web App (PWA) support, thanks to the `create-react-app` application generator.

Data-binding is one-way, meaning less unwanted side effects.

Redux, the most popular framework for managing application state in React, is easy to learn and master.

React implements Functional Programming (FP) concepts, creating easy-to-test and highly reusable code.

Applications can be made type-safe with either Microsoft’s TypeScript or Facebook’s Flow, with both featuring native support for JSX.

Migrating between versions is generally very easy, with Facebook providing “codemods” to automate much of the process.

Skills learned in React can be applied (often directly) to React Native development.

React is un-opinionated and leaves developers to make choices about the best way to develop. This can be tackled by strong project leadership and good processes.

The community is divided on the best way to write CSS in React, split between traditional stylesheets (CSS Modules) and CSS-in-JS (i.e. Emotion and Styled Components).

React is moving away from class-based components, which may be a barrier for developers more comfortable with Object Oriented Programming (OOP).

Mixing templating with logic (JSX) can be confusing for some developers at first.

Companies that use React: Facebook, Instagram, Netflix, New York Times, Yahoo, Khan Academy, Whatsapp, Codecademy, Dropbox, Airbnb, Asana, Atlassian, Intercom, Microsoft, Slack, Storybook, and many more.

VueJS is a progressive javascript framework as stated on their website. Its not as powerful as Angular but has more features than React. Unlike React, VueJs has their own state management, Router and also has directives which helps makes Its usage simpler.

Empowered HTML. This means that Vue.js has many similar characteristics with Angular and this can help to optimize HTML blocks handling with the use of different components.

Detailed documentation. Vue.js has very circumstantial documentation which can fasten learning curve for developers and save a lot of time to develop an app using only the basic knowledge of HTML and JavaScript.

Adaptability. It provides a rapid switching period from other frameworks to Vue.js because of the similarity with Angular and React in terms of design and architecture.

Awesome integration. Vue.js can be used for both building single-page applications and more difficult web interfaces of apps. The main thing is that smaller interactive parts can be easily integrated into the existing infrastructure with no negative effect on the entire system.

Large scaling. Vue.js can help to develop pretty large reusable templates that can be made with no extra time allocated for that according to its simple structure.

Tiny size. Vue.js can weight around 20KB keeping its speed and flexibility that allows reaching much better performance in comparison to other frameworks.

Lack of resources. Vue.js still has a pretty small market share in comparison with React or Angular, which means that knowledge sharing in this framework is still in the beginning phase.

Risk of over flexibility. Sometimes, Vue.js might have issues while integrating into huge projects and there is still no experience with possible solutions, but they will definitely come soon.

Companies that use Vue.js: Xiaomi, Alibaba, WizzAir, EuroNews, Grammarly, Gitlab and Laracasts, Adobe, Behance, Codeship, Reuters.

As a developer, there is no substantial difference in which framework to choose, because it just takes some time to get used to the new one. I am fairly good with VueJs and also with React, I haven’t actually touched on Angular yet. It is my target to know all 3 Frameworks but at the moment, I want to shift my attention to some backend using NodeJS. Its the popular for backend if you’re a javascript developer and you want to add some backend to your application. It also has some good Frameworks such as Express, SailJS, AdonisJs, Koa, Loopback etc… and the new NestJS.

But at the moment, I am stuck with these 2 front-end frameworks (React and VueJS). I urge you to learn because they’re very good and powerful.

From the blog

How I got here pt.2: The Software Development Journey

How I got here pt.1: The Childhood

Framework Wars 2020

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