What better way to start writing than in International Women’s month??

My name is Aisha Bukar. I am a Nigerian and the president of the Nigeria Association Of Computing Students (NACOS) Unilag Chapter.

I’ve always had a thing for writing but I never gave it so much thought. Why? I write for pleasure and didn’t think I was ready to let people review my writing skills. Haha, just kidding. I was born ready. Anyway, I thought to myself that what better way to put my work out there and share my experience as a female in the tech space than in the month celebrating women. Why not?

How I started

I remember my first experience as a developer in 2018, I joined a coding club hosted by my community called “Code Lagos”. Before that, I’ve had experience using Python and Java programming language from school but I hadn’t done anything meaningful with it. Starting with code Lagos was a beautiful experience for me, I met newbies like me, connecting, growing, and learning together was just a great way to start coding. After the program ended, there was an unintentional break from coding. I got distracted with school work and just stopped coding. Nevertheless, a part of me missed it.

Choosing my career path

Fast forward to 2019/2020, I started coding again, but I developed a new interest in Data Science / Machine Learning. It all started during the COVID 19 lockdown. I loved Machine learning and solving problems with statistics was my thing. I participated in a Machine Learning competition on Zindi, ‘Women’s Hack for Safety’ and I came 7th/130.
I felt a little down after this competition cause how it works on Zindi is that you randomly choose your top 3 submissions even if you had submitted 80 times, I chose the wrong submission sadly, I could have ended up in the top 3 spots but oh well I thought to myself, this was my first time participating in any competition and I did great. Being in the top 10 was no joke. [zindi.africa/competitions/womens-hackathon/..

Down the lane, I got discouraged to continue with Machine Learning cause the opportunities here in Nigeria are quite low. So, I continued with Software Engineering. Finally, I landed my first role as a Software Engineer intern and it was an eye-opening experience. I majorly worked on the Backend using Laravel. I worked in a team of six. Five males and one female, yup, I was the only female.
There were times I struggled as a developer and felt like I wasn’t good enough, thinking about it now maybe it was because the engineering team consisted of only males. Nevertheless, these guys made me who I am today. They made me a better developer. The CONSISTENCY, the DRIVE, the INCESSANT motivation. I worked on applications I never thought I could have pulled off.

Challenges I faced as a female developer

Every day had its gifts/baggage lol. There were some days I struggled with even opening my system because I was so completely lost on what to do, there were also days I’d wake up to bug fixes (lol I detested those days) but there were also really good days, my codes would run smoothly, I’d complete my endpoints in time and have no bugs to fix (loved those days and I want them every time lol).
Nevertheless, they sharpened my ability to tackle problems the right way. And, I was also not going to give up and just let the boys win lol. I had to do this for my female devs.

Announcement !!

I am writing this article to celebrate International women’s day (still our month of course) and also to announce that I’d be starting my journey as a technical writer (yay!). I’ve had experience writing research papers so I’m sure I would enjoy this (no biggie lol).
My main focus would be writing on PHP/Laravel/ Machine Learning with Python articles to help my community and support growth especially to encourage more “women” to join the tech community. Be sure to watch out for this space, bye for now.