Boot camp challenges and how I have adapted in the last few weeks

Finally, it was day one of boot camp and I was as excited as I could be.  I had spent the last six months or so learning as much as I could, honing my skills in anticipation of a potential invitation to @Andela’s boot camp. The invitation finally came and we completed our pre boot camp tasks at home in anticipation of boot camp resumption.

Boot camp started on a high, we reviewed the portions of work we had completed from home and the skills sessions were as interesting as I had imagined.  A vibrant and lively boot camp population made the skills sessions very enjoyable.

However, the story changed quite rapidly. Like the saying goes, change is the only constant thing in life. The location of the boot camp (Ikeja) was quite far from my residence (Lekki) and we were required to be on location by  8:30 AM. If you are familiar with Lagos, then you should know that this means planning an extra two to three hours for commute. I eventually had to change residence and temporarily reside in a location close to the boot camp location. Relocating came with its attendant challenges.

While the boot camp organizers provided for internet especially at the off-site boot camp locations, we still has issues with internet connectivity. I had to basically switch to an old SIM card to provide internet for myself.

Working with Test Driven Development (TDD) has also been a huge challenge for me. I was only introduced to this concept in boot camp and I fell in love with it and decided to utilize it fully. While this had made my code writing more focused and effective, it had meant a marked change to what I was used to and it required a lot of discipline for me to adapt and not revert to what I had been used to.

Learning and sticking to the expected GitHub workflow and documentation conventions @Andela was surprisingly quite challenging for me. While I fully understand the reasons why we need to follow conventions, learning and being required to implement them immediately tested my ability to adapt. The timelines for completing the projects also made pressure pile up. However, I was resolute in my commitment to stick to the required conventions and I eventually did so.

Perhaps my greatest challenge has been working with the new ECMAScript 6. I had just started learning javascript a couple of months ago with the old ES5 and we were required to switch to ECMAScript 6 even before I fully comprehended ES5. It was a huge demand on my ability and I had to quickly learn ECMA6 as fast as I could in order to adapt.

MY EXPERIENCE SO FAR IN ANDELA’S BOOT CAMP

Time has never felt so fast and yet so slow for me as the past couple of days have. It’s been four-days already at Andela’s boot camp, and I must confess, each day feels like a month in terms of the volume of learning. Paradoxically, each day also feels like a second in terms of the time required to utilize knowledge learnt and meet deliverables.

The pre-boot camp hype was as high as you could imagine; adrenaline running through my veins, wild thoughts running through my head and wild code running through my fingers (or maybe not).  I was as prepared as I could, hoping for the best and yet preparing for the worst. Tick tock, tick tock…gradually the day drew closer and anxiety grew higher. Finally, it was one day to boot camp; I packed my bags and travelled 300 KMs to attend boot camp.

The boot campers’ Slack group ensured that most participants were ‘virtually familiar’ before actually meeting in person. The rapport was great on Slack and this translated to warm introductions when we eventually met in person. The boot camp facilitators were warm and welcoming. In no time, the facilitators on-boarded us with the ground rules, some soft skills sessions and we were good to go.

We met with our LFAs (Learning Facilitator Assistants) on the very first day to receive feedback on the portion of work we had completed before resuming boot camp and it has been a sprint ever since. Feedback after feedback has been the order of the day for most boot campers. The already short days for implementing feedbacks are further shortened with daily article writing requirements and surveys. Twenty-four hours has never felt so short.

Notwithstanding the huge workload, the learning has been amazing. The tons of learning resources shared by boot campers on the Slack channel have made the boot camp feel like a mini-university. Besides the amazing resource sharing, implementing feedback received meant further learning. You have to learn to improve and correct/implement feedback received, and I must confess, there has been no shortage of learning. Four days already feels like four months in a university.

Perhaps my greatest joy so far in the boot camp has been proving to myself that I can learn and utilize whatever I have learnt as fast as I wish. I have learnt to use tools I have ignored for years within days. I have also met a couple of amazing people and I’m sure our friendship will persist far longer than boot camp. I have once again experienced the energy rush from doing what you love and I have also experienced the joy of fixing a nagging bug in your code. Yes, I have done all these within four days (better believe!).

As boot camp progresses and week 2 draws closer, there is no shortage of tasks in sight. The complexity of tasks also seems not to be getting easier. However, there is also no shortage of energy or passion to forge ahead!

My first encounter with the Command Line Interface (CLI)

Programmers and scientists staring at a black or white background screen, with just a cursor blinking and typing their way away into hysteria or melancholy had always been the stuff of pure science fiction to me.

I had been using a computer for over ten years and I could not remember ever having used that black-screen-with-white-cursor program let alone type myself into hysteria with it. I patiently waited for an opportunity to experience the hysteria those programmers and scientists had while using the mysterious program.

Well, as part of my preparations for @Andela’s BootCamp, my opportunity finally arrived to use the program. I found out the program was known as the Command Line Interface (CLI) and I was utterly disappointed. I was utterly disappointed at the misrepresentations hundreds of movies I had watched made about the hysteric states users of CLI got into. But I was not disappointed with the power and usefulness of the CLI.

The CLI is a text-based interface that is used to operate software and operating systems while allowing the user to respond to visual prompts by typing single commands into the interface and receiving a reply in the same way. (https://www.techopedia.com/definition/3337/command-line-interface-cli)

Perhaps the best way to understand the CLI is to contrast it with the Graphical User Interface (GUI). The GUI is what you see when you open a typical Windows or Mac system; a collection of graphics, images, audio etc. that allows you to navigate the system with ease. The GUI allows you to perform actions such as opening a file by just clicking on a image of the file, delete a file by clicking on a text and much more by interfacing with pretty looking graphics. The CLI is quite the opposite. Imagine performing all those tasks by just typing a command into a cursor prompt; now that’s the CLI.

As tedious as it may sound (yea, the CLI can be quite tedious: you are not allowed to misspell a word, you obviously have to know the command before you can type it and so much more), the CLI is actually quite useful.

The CLI can actually be much more faster than using the GUI (provided you know the commands). The CLI uses much less memory and much less processing time. For much more complex tasks, the CLI can be scripted to automate tasks and the CLI is actually independent of the operating system. The CLI can also operate on reduced display hardware requirements e.g. a simple low-resolution monitor is sufficient. (https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-advantages-and-disadvantages-of-Command-Line-Interface)

(https://er.yuvayana.org/command-line-interface-application-advantages-disadvantages/)

Aside from its ability to make you look like a geek, perhaps the greatest advantage of the CLI is how low-level and yet sophisticated it is. For me, the CLI commands are like individual Lego™ blocks. They provide you unparalleled ability to build what you want.

How I bullied my mind into learning under pressure

The time allowed was crystal clear, “One week!”. I had been consuming API backends for years but I never thought to learn how to build one or read up on it. I had always thought to myself, why do I need to build an API when I could just use out of the thousands already available on the web or outsource the build process?

Finally, my nonchalance had caught up with me; I had just one week to build a well-tested API backend for a web application using the famous Node.js and Express framework. I also had to ensure that my code followed a specific style guide (Airbnb) and use Mocha, a popular testing framework. For developers with years of experience, this might look like a stroll in the park, but for newbies with just a few months of coding experience, this can be daunting. If the only thing you can do after installing Node.js is to type `Node –v` in your command line terminal to check the Node.js version; then closing your laptop to sleep can very much look like the best option.

Of course, the first instincts of a millennial kicked in — Internet search. My search query was simple enough- ‘How to build API backend’; but the results varied quite a lot in style, pattern, framework etc. I became more confused and fear kicked in. What if the little JavaScript I knew was not enough to implement an API backend? What if I am unable to implement it at all? What if I implement it but followed a wrong tutorial and did it in a completely wrong way? What if after what if!

But one thing was absolutely certain: I was determined to do whatever it took to become a fellow at the prestigious Andela. I could not give up now. I would not let fear and a fixed mindset stall my progress. I knew too much about Carol Dweck’s amazing work on mindsets to fall victim of a fixed mindset. It was yet another challenge for me to demonstrate to myself that my mind was the only obstacle between unimaginable growth and me.

There was no time to waste, the time was short and the requirement was clear. This was my first encounter with using the required frameworks and building an API so I had to start from scratch. Tutorial after tutorial, video after video, one blog post after another, I kept on reading, watching and learning. After all, no one has ever been reported to pass away from information overload. Learning had never felt so laborious.

After close to two days of non-stop self-learning, it all began to make sense. Our minds just have a funny way of making things look difficult out of fear. The process became clearer and easier after running through tens of tutorials. And when I eventually opened up the command line terminal and started typing away the code, sure I made a lot of mistakes, but then every mistake meant more reading and more learning — an opportunity to grow.

Then, I reflected on the state of mind I started from, I was afraid to even think about the challenge or open up the command line terminal. But now, I was happy with what I had learned and how far I had come with building the API. I was even happier when I was able to help my peers and point them in the right direction from my little experience.

I realized my mind was afraid to learn at the beginning, for fear of being limited in capacity, but I had successfully bullied my mind into learning even under pressure.

It's SAP Insider HANA 2016 Conference! Feb. 16-19, 2016. Please pay for my ticket? *Sad face*

Next week is HANA week!

So lately my interest in Enterprise Resource Planning (ERPs) has skyrocketed, I even dream about it these days!

Enterprise Resource Planning software giant, SAP (Systems, Applications & Products in Data Processing) in collaboration with SAPinsider is hosting the Insider HANA 2016 conference from 16-19 February 2016 in Wynn Las Vegas.

The conference is an opportunity to showcase the latest SAP HANA product capabilities and hear from lots of experts from SAP, partners and LIVE SAP HANA customers.

A number of SAP experts are billed to anchor sessions at the event. Experts from top consulting firms Deloitte, KPMG, Accenture, Comerit etc. are scheduled to anchor sessions.

See you there! (If I get money for my ticket!)

Facebook.org: Which side of the argument are you on?

Facebook.org: to stay or to go?

Update 09-Feb-16: India stands by net neutrality! Prohibits service providers from charging discriminatory prices for Internet services even if it is free, effectively banning Facebook internet.org.

It's one of those arguments I just love listening to. You really can't help but to see sense in both sides' arguments.

Background

August 20 2013, Facebook announced it's Internet.org project. The goal was/is simple: to connect the world (through the internet of course!). First step was to provide the world's poorest with free access to a collection of websites and applications through partnerships with telecommunications companies.
Noble, right? I mean who would oppose free access to the internet?

Netflix comes to Nigeria: What's all the fuss about?

At the prestigious Consumer Electronic Show (CES) 2016, Netflix CEO and co-founder, Reed Hastings, made the much anticipated and yet surprising announcement: Netflix was going live in 130 countries instantaneously. An elated Hastings reeled out a list of countries, including Nigeria, in which Netflix was being switch on. Hastings chronicled the goal of Netflix in this excerpt carried on Netflix’s website: “Today you are witnessing the birth of a new global Internet TV network. With this launch, consumers around the world -- from Singapore to St. Petersburg, from San Francisco to Sao Paulo -- will be able to enjoy TV shows and movies simultaneously -- no more waiting. With the help of the Internet, we are putting power in consumers’ hands to watch whenever, wherever and on whatever device.”

Netflix, established in 1997, is an American company that delivers media (TV shows, movies) on demand to subscribers via internet. Netflix also rents out DVDs and Blu-ray disks via mail. As of October 2015, Netflix reported 69.17 million subscribers worldwide, including more than 43 million in the US. Netflix reported revenues of US$ 5.50 billion for 2014 financial year.

CES 2016: What I'ld give to be there!

CES 2016!!!

The prestigious Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is the premier consumer electronic show (pun intended) of the world. It's one of those events I'ld give the world to attend.  Organized by the Consumer Technology Association, the CES is a global consumer electronics and consumer technology tradeshow that takes place every January in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The 2016 edition was as exciting as ever! The top-guns as well as the new entrants were all on hand to display their prototypes and next-gen consumer products.

Google achieves AI 'breakthrough' by beating Go champion

Every once in a while, we get a news so refreshing you begin to reimagine the current capabilities of technologies and the future prospects.

Before I proceed with this write-up, I must take a minute to give a big shout out to all those who dedicate all their time; Night and Day to conducting research and making all the innovation we admire today. We thank God and we thank you all!! You add hope to our existence!

VergePOS

VergePOS

Read here, write up to come later.

See app here.

Amazon be designing and testing order delivery by drone while Yudala be delivering already! Big up, Yudala!

Yudala first!

 

Amazon, the US tech and retail giant, has been designing and working on a drone delivery project, Prime Air, for a while now. Amazon intends to deliver customer orders by drone within minutes in the near future, but guess what? Nigeria online e-commerce site has already delivered its first order by drone, right here in Lagos. Yea, cool, huh?

*Evil grin* Well, Yudala actually beat Amazon to the race many thanks to delays and strict US regulations.

Become a Deloitte apprentice by playing a game!

Become a Deloitte apprentice by playing a game!

Well, if you are my generation (generation Y) or better still, from the techie school of thought, then you will most likely agree with me that a lot of old things are still going on around here.

But hey, it's not an all gloomy picture; some important developments and changes in attitude are already taking place and these are inspiring. Deloitte, the professional services giant, is set to trial a process of selecting the best talent using a game. This disregards traditionally held beliefs of university education and academic excellence as proof of intelligence and I think this is wonderful.

This may not make any sense to the older generation, but if you recognize that a lot of Millennials currently see schooling as an unnecessary and stifling undertaking, then the logic in using this radical method of recruitment is not far fetched. We call it "radical" now, it may as well become the norm in the future.

Read full story here and here.

3-D printed human organs; Rejecting free internet in India? ; Mobile West Africa 2015; Snap pictures non-stop;

Hello buddies, it  has been another eventful week, thank God for the gift of life and the gift of science and technology!

3-D printed human organs

Do you remember this piece on  3-D printing? Well, although scientists have been 3-D printing human tissues for a while, see here also, lately there has been a buzz about the team at Cornell University printing a human ear (which is an organ; tissues make up organs).

Two Million Phones sold in a day; Smart Watches; US blocks Intel China upgrade; Apple jostling for exclusive tunes like Jay-Z

What a hectic week it has been for me as well as on the tech scene. I'm gonna keep it short and simple on this one.

Yep! you read the heading right, Xiaomi sold just over two million smartphones in one single day! that's crazy, right? Well, apparently, Xiaomi often called the apple of China, made $335 million (don't scream, pls) during its annual "Mi Fan Fest" selling a range of devices. The company is already one of the top electronics manufacturers in the world making smart watches, phones, TVs etc. Of course, its Chinese, what else did you expect?

  
Apple also debuted its much anticipated Apple smartwatch  and MacBook this week. The smartwatch was available for trial in select stores around the world, and trust Apples fans there's already a backlog of orders. But, hey a range of other companies also have smartwatches in the market already, including Samsung. Well, I haven't tried an Apple smart-watch yet, so I'm just gonna chill for the reviews to come in.

Well, Tianhe-2 located in China, has been the most powerful computer for a while now and China wanted to upgrade it. However, the upgrade was to use chips from Intel, a US manufacturer. Apparently, US has sighted fears over nuclear research to stop Intel from supplying China with the chips. Read story here. But trust China, they have decided to accelerate development of homegrown chipmakers to supply the needed chips. I think what this story speaks to is that regulatory risks are real! Do not neglect them.

Lastly, do you remember what happened with Jay-Z, Tidal and Spotify? Well, here's the story. Jay-Z and some other musicians including Madonna, Kanye West, Beyonce, Daft Punk, Nicki Minaj, Rihanna, Alicia Keys and Calvin Harris, floated their own music streaming service, Tidal. Well, apparently in order to boost sales, Jay-Z pulled his album, Reasonable Doubt, from Spotify, a dominant music streaming service, and put it exclusively on Tidal (talk about business guts!). Well, I think that might have just sparked a race for exclusive content. In recent news, Apple has joined the race, read here.

Muchas gracias!

Spectranet partners iROKOtv: gifts 30 days viewing on iROKOtv

Please take note of the date of this post: 5th April, 2015. As I shall not be liable for any exhaustion of your data as a result of billed streaming on iROKOtv.com. lol.

Well, I just love it when I hear of any development on naija's tech scene, it gives me joy!!

iROKOtv.com, in case you haven't heard of them, is a pan-African internet TV station, with strong roots in Nigeria. That's just the simplest way to put it. They have a lot of movies in their catalogue: Nollywood, Bollywood, Hollywood, (what else?-wood), telenova (ask your wife what this is), etc. which you can either view online or download to see later. Cool, huh!

On the other hand, you have Spectranet, a 4G, LTE internet service provider. 4G LTE basically means super-fast internet connectivity, I think its one of the fastest commercial internet speed you can get around depending on the implementation (telecoms guys, please correct me).

The issue with on-demand video streaming is that it requires a fast and dependable network to be enjoyable, and I guess this has been an issue hindering market penetration of iROKOtv, but Spectranet has a fast and dependable network, and now they (i.e. iROKOtv and Spectranet) have formed a partnership- you get the gist, huh!

SYNERGY!!!! That's the gist!! This may mean increased revenue for Spectranet, because video streaming consumes a lot of data, so you would have to keep buying more from Spectranet. It may also mean an increased quality of service from iROKOtv; I mean, if you see a movie displaying seamlessly just like your traditional TV from iROKOtv, that's quality service. With quality service comes consumer loyalty and brand reputation- you get the gist, huh!

Well, I use "may" above, because the actual details of the deal was not announced, and we do not know what they have agreed on precisely, but whatever it is, it should be SYNERGISTIC!

So much talk about talking Barbie

I forgive you if you do not know what Barbie is, especially if you are a male and an adult who grew up in Africa. It's a doll, a female doll, kids love to play with. It has been marketed for over 50 fifty years through novels, TV etc. So, recently, Mattel (toy giant and makers of Barbie) in association with ToyTalk (a start-up), announced a revamped Barbie. A Barbie that can have conversations with your kids, yep! converse with your kids!

Mark Lennihan/AP

  

The technology

The technology is not entirely new. Hello Barbie, as she is called, is equipped with a microphone, WiFi (basically internet access) with which it connects to a cloud (basically computing power residing in a remote location). So when a person speaks to Barbie, the words are collected, sent over the internet to a cloud where some software analyses and composes a response for Barbie to reply with. The data is even stored, so Barbie can give you intelligent replies based on what you have told her before. Cool, huh!

The outburst

Well, as you can imagine, there has been an outcry from some folks. They raise issues that are quite germane:

• Invasion of privacy
• Exploitation of the data collected for marketing purposes

In the toy makers defense, they have said that the technology is not so different from what we have in the market already in the form of Siri and Cortana. They have also said that the data collected will not be used for marketing purposes and that a mechanism for seeking parental consent will be in place before the doll is launched.

The business lessons

1. "Flow" with the trend or be the trend: we see Mattel keying into popular trends of Internet of things, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence. The internet of things phenomenon basically says that at some point in the future, most things will be connected to the internet, if not all things. Here, I think Hello Barbie is gonna be the trend for smart toys. I believe we will see a plethora of toys making use of technology come into the market very soon. Good thing Mattel did not wait to be shown the way.
2. Start-ups: yea, I know, you have heard so much about them lately. ToyTalk is a start-up, and Mattel is a long time industry player. The truth is that start-ups have a lot of strengths: they are agile, innovative, flexible, on top of the trend, risk-takers etc. Rather than see them as competition, take them as collaborators and make something cool with them. Make it a win-win situation.

Wanna discuss some more? techmaxng@gmail.com

Windows kills Internet Explorer with "Project Spartan"

Earlier this year at the Microsoft Windows 10 event, the software giant unveiled what consumers can expect from Windows 10. We had a number of features unveiled: Cortana (the virtual assistant), HoloLens glasses (Holographic Virtual Reality, which we will discuss later), a lot of visual changes and integration features which you can find here. For this post we will be discussing "Project Spartan", the browser billed to replace Internet Explorer.

 Copyright: Windows

If you are part of my generation, then Internet Explorer most likely has a huge imprint on your "digital" history. It has been the default Windows browser for so long and after going through so many iterations, Microsoft finally feels the need to re-brand and relaunch their browser offering (important lesson for your business). The new browser, dubbed "Project Spartan" (because an actual name has not been chosen), and in fact the entire Windows 10 offering, is designed for the age we are now: touch screen devices and mobile multi-device folks (you gotta evolve with your market!). Briefly, the new browser, as it appears in the public preview build, has note-taking features which allows you to actually make notes on the webpage you are viewing. It is very clean and trim, it has a reading mode feature that allows you to read without distraction and a host of others you can find here.   

The takeaway

 The Internet Explorer (IE) has been under fierce competition lately from other browsers. After suffering a major brand damage from the notorious security flaws of IE 6, I think Microsoft feels its the right time to re-brand their browser offering and keep it up-to-date with the current consumer preference. This also keys in with the launch of what Microsoft is pushing as a radically redesigned operating system, Windows 10.  It remains to be seen if "Project Spartan" and indeed Windows 10 will see massive consumer adoption.

   

Self-driving car travels from coast to coast in the US

Well, it's one of those futuristic ideas gradually turning into a reality. The 2014 Audi SQ5 fitted by Delphi travelled across 15 states from San Francisco to New York City. Many companies including Google, Mercedes Benz and Tesla have been active in self-driving car research;  many believe this to be the future.

Pending the arrival of self-driving cars, what we actually see in the market right now are advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS). ADAS are implemented to aid the driver and ensure safer, better driving. In ADAS, we see cars fitted with sensors, cameras, data networks and communication systems (vehicle-to-vehicle or vehicle-to-infrastructure).  Some ADAS only warn the driver while others go as far as taking control of the system. There are a plethora of ADAS including driver drowsiness detection, forward collision warning, blind spot monitor  and we have even seen movie scenes come to life: BMW i3 parks itself at the touch of a smartwatch .

7 year old Girl Receives 3-D Printed Prosthetic Hand

You love the title of this post, right? Yes, that's the kind of amazing stuff technology does. While the technology (3-D printing) behind the news in this article has been around for a while and has been put to a wide variety of use, I still get fascinated by the varied use 3-D technology.

So what is 3-D printing?

Well, there is Wikipedia, where you can get an instant information overload on 3-D printing, so I won't go into details. I'll just give a brief overview of it. Let's use the image below to describe it.
Assuming you have Yoda's entire body (the Star Wars character in the picture below) graphically designed on a software. Then you want to "manufacture" it using plastic. What you see in the picture below is a 3-D printer that can 'print' (manufacture) the Yoda computer model you have using plastic(not exactly plastic but something similar). The 3-D printer below has a movable nozzle that carefully 'prints' the 'molten' plastic layer by layer until the model is printed. In the picture below, the head has been printed, layer by layer.

                                         Image Credit: Gizmodo

Tech giants push computers on sticks!

No pun intended in the title :-D  You know a USB 'stick', right? That's the type of stick I'm referring to. So, recently, we have seen technology giants competing to push computing devices, approximately the size of a large-size USB stick to the market; and as everything else technology does, it excites me. Not to worry, I'll bring you up to speed in a moment and get you exited too.

The technology

If you are as "recent" as I think you are, then you should be quite familiar with the laptop. If you do not know the laptop, then you might be in a wrong time period. Take a good look at the laptop, you basically have a large screen, a large keyboard, battery and then the real computing stuff on the mother board. What a bunch of smart guys have said is that how about we cram "computing power" (not as powerful as those in laptops though) in something a little larger than a USB stick, equip the "large USB stick" with a means to connect to TVs or other computers, and then put WiFi and/or USB connectivity on it. The result is a "pocketable computer", which I will call a "ComStick" (it's still so new, that there is no standard industry name for it). So the "ComStick" is usually connectable via an HDMI (basically a good interface for transferring audio/video) port or USB. When you connect the "ComStick" to a TV for instance, the screen of the TV becomes your display monitor, you can use a mouse and keyboard with the "ComStick" via Bluetooth, and the inbuilt WiFi can be used to connect the "ComStick" to the internet. What you have then set-up is basically a computer.

So what? Why are we discussing this?