Synopsis
In January 2021, I was working at a graphic design shop. A year before that, I was selling movies in a small movie shop in Eldoret, Uasin Gishu. At the time, the most I knew about computers was how to use CorelDraw and Photoshop. It paid the bills and put food on the table, but I was living hand-to-mouth in a draining 7-AM-to-7-AM cycle. Every morning, I told myself: “There must be more to life!”I decided to startwhere I was with what I had. I began teaching myself 3D animation to improve my skills. You can see my very first artwork in Blender, a 3D design and animation software.
But the real turning point happened while watching a tutorial by Blender Guru. He mentioned creating custom plugins usingPythonprogramming language. The moment I saw those lines of "gibberish" code, my heart raced. It looked complex, it looked difficult—and I loved it!
For the next few months I dived into the world or programming. It started with creating Blender 3D plugins with python, I failed terribly, 5 weeks later I gave up. Then came web development, this seemed a little bit easier until I came across the words API, Caching, Backend-- I gave up. Then came mobile app development—I couldn’t even set up a simulator on my laptop. Well, I didn’t fail per se, my laptop was not powerful enough, let’s leave it at that. Then came cyber security. It seemed fun, and the thought of gaining access not granted was exhilarating, I know you’re waiting to read “I gave up”, well, did give up.
I wouldn’t call this attempt a total failure. Every time I gave up, I was left with very important fundamental knowledge that I wasn’t able to recognise and appreciate at the time. After this cycle of failed attempts, I finally tried to focus on Web development. So I started simple, with website builders like Wordpess and working with pre-built templates.
Fast-forward to June 2022, I am an ICT Officer shipping code for new features. In the last four years, I’ve built over four major software projects, mentored 200+ students, and spoken at 10+ universities. Now, I’m building Soma Storiesand the largest community of self taught engineers in Africa.Why am I telling you this?Because tech is one of the most accessible fields to transition into. Many of the world’s best engineers are self-taught. If I could do it starting from that design shop, so can you.