After working in the design industry for over five years, I decided to pursue a career in Golang programming. Many people were surprised by this decision, and there were many negative comments and some positive ones. Before making the final decision, I spoke with a few people about their thoughts on career transitions, and honestly, their wise words were enough to keep me going because I knew I was heading in the right direction.

A little about my tech background

To give you some context, I began my tech journey in 2014. My uncle introduced me to a free one-week game development boot camp organized by Start Innovation Hub. It was for kids aged 12 to 16, and since I was 16 that year, I signed up. I was the oldest in the class, but that didn't stop me. I say this because the students in that class were extremely bright, and I didn't have half the exposure they did, but I persisted. By the end of the week, the class had been divided into three groups, and we had all worked together to create different games using the "Lua programming language." My team created a game called "Save Nigeria," which was quite interesting... to cut the long story short, my team came first.

Fast forward a few months later, Mr. Hanson Johnson nominated me for an award - KOLA Awards (Kids with outstanding leadership abilities Award), which came with many perks; I was thrilled.

The award inspired me so much that I had to talk to Mr. Hanson about doing something other than games; he suggested that I join the java classes that were taking place at the hub at the time. So I began learning java and participating in events. And I remember we were just two girls in the hub then. So any time I went to the hub early, I would wait for the other lady to show up before I entered because there were just too many guys in one place.

A while after that, I had to travel out of my city. A trip that was supposed to last for three months ended in two years. My laptop got spoilt while I was there, so I stopped coding. But one surprising thing is that when I came back in 2016, my passion for tech grew even more. I continued learning Java and Android Development and started working on projects. Just when I gained admission into the university (2017), I got accepted into the Andela Learning Community, where I majored in Android Development. During the ALC Program, I learned more complex things about working on Android Apps and built out two projects. Well, this did not come without a price. While working on the final project to wrap up the ALC Program, I was preparing for my final exams for the A-Level Program I was doing in school. I would devote three hours to coding and debugging codes, then spend the rest of my time reading and writing my exams; it was very tedious, but surprisingly none of them suffered. I completed my project and earned good grades in school. During this same period, I won a Laptop due to participating in the Hotels—ng Software Development Internship (3.0 and 4.0), where I emerged as a finalist twice. Mark Essien tweeted about me, which got two companies interested in my growth, and one gave me a laptop.

Okay, enough of the long story; maybe I will share this on my YouTube Channel.

From Android Development, I did a couple of things. Learned front-end web development, technical writing, software testing, UI/UX design, and project management. It's funny how I learned all these skills in HNG Internship and applied them to the things I was working on then. After discovering design in HNG 3.0, I decided to do the internship a second time and, this time, be more intentional about learning a particular thing: "Design." It was interesting; I excelled and became a finalist for the second time.

Long story short, that's how I started as a designer, and I have had the opportunity to work with unique individuals and companies. Pioneered new design communities, mentored students at Designlab, and is currently leading all the Friends of Figma Design Communities in the Africa Region. My design and community management career opened many doors for me, which I can't even begin to mention. At this point, one would say, "so Bella, if you were doing so well in design, why quit?"

The Switch

A short answer would be that; "Design is something I discovered and wanted to do," while "Coding is what I fell in love with but could not go on at the time because I had a lot ongoing." I feel at peace when I am coding as opposed to designing, which feels like I am doing it to impress people who joined the tech industry to meet me as a designer. I am grateful that I had the opportunity to learn the things I learned in design and contribute to projects.

Deciding to go back to coding will take a lot of time, hard work, and consistency, and I am ready to put in the hard work. Everything feels new to me, but I will get the hang of it soon.

Why Golang?

When I made the announcement, I got questions like "why Golang?"; "why not just do front-end since you are coming from the design background," etc.

Oh well... for those who don't know. Golang, or Go, is an open-source programming language that facilitates the development of robust, maintainable, and efficient applications. Golang was created at Google by Robert Griesemer, Rob Pike, and Ken Thompson as a statistically compiled programming language. It was conceptualized in 2007 at Google and unveiled to the public in November 2009.

Aside from being an open-source language, it is also clean and simple. Go is intended to be simple, purpose-built, and easy to use. Essentially, Go is an excellent language for beginners because everything is done for a practical reason.

Amongst many other reasons, these are the top reasons why I decided to choose Golang over other backend programming languages;

• Open-source: It's an open-source language and is also rapidly being adopted with cloud-native tools and technologies.

• Its Simplicity: Go has everything you need, including a basic test library, synchronization primitives, templating, and more. Go, coders, use fewer dependencies.

• Reduced Learning Curves: Go has an unusually short learning curve. The documentation is straightforward and uses a no-frills syntax. Some developers even claim that you can learn Go in one evening.

• Compiles Faster: Compilation is required for Go. Compilers directly translate to machine code before execution, unlike interpreted languages. This speeds up and optimizes code.

• It has a Large Talent Pool: Go is currently in high demand as a programming language. That being the case, there will be no shortage of qualified programmers.

• Compared to many other programming languages, Go requires only moderate memory.

I could always go on and on about why I chose Golang and why it's one of the best programming languages, but let's stop here for now.

The only challenge I think I would face with Golang is that It is not as well-organized as other programming languages. As a result, I will need to write more lines of code to accomplish the same task that would take a couple of lines of code in another language.

One thing that gives me hope is that this is not my first programming experience. It's just that this time I am coming back better and bigger. I will do well in this industry and make a name for myself.

Watch out for my blog here on hashnode; I will be sharing articles about my learning journey, challenges, and basically anything about Golang.

Welcome to a new dispensation 🥂