In one word, EYE-OPENING: My ALC journey
Okay! time to be honest, prior to my enrollment into Andela’s Android Learning Community (ALC) I had already written and published two android applications to Google playstore plus some others I did for people so yeah, I could say I was an android developer then, but of what quality??
I saw a post from Moyinoluwa Adeyemi on facebook about the ALC program, I almost skipped it because I thought it was exclusively for the ladies but as fate would have it, my curiosity exceeded my doubts; I clicked the link and registered and the rest was AWESOMENESS
I scaled through the entrance test which was to develop an app that shows a list of all Github users in Lagos, Nigeria, after which I was officially enrolled into the ALC intermediate program. During the slack welcome party, I learnt that Google through Andela and Udacity offered us a scholarship to take the Associate Android Developer fast track course on Udacity which meant we could write the exams and be Google-certified android developers along with our badges. My joy knew no bounds as I had been saving up to enroll in that same course!
It was a double win for me!!
The program was not all rosy, I had to combine it with my Project work as I was enrolled towards the end of my last semester as a University undergrauate (Obafemi Awolowo University). Towards the later stages of the ALC program, I was done with University and got a job as an android developer so I also had to combine it with work. It was all worth it.
What I enjoyed
- Meeting new people, making new connections and sharing knowledge. I particularly enjoyed my team mates.
- Learning best practices in android development. Initially, in previous apps I built, I restricted the orientation to portrait for phones and landscape for tabs but now I cant even imagine doing that!, other concepts learnt include best practices for passing data between activiites, fragments and the likes, xml layout design best practices, creating widgets and writing UI tests with espresso.
- Code reviews!!! This to me was my favourite part of the whole process. I always looked forward to the next code review because of new hacks, ways to optimize my code etc. I advice anyone that has not taken a paid course on Udacity to try one out to enjoy this benefit.
So… I took the certification exam last week Sunday and I was reviewed today, all that is left now is to schedule and have my exit interview, after which I get my badge!
In conclusion, this ALC program made me a better android developer, No it did not make me an expert but it laid the required foundation and it helped provide part of the answers to the never-ending question: What Next in android development and it saved me $750!!!(the price of the course plus certification) I would have still been saving that’s if I haven't given up by now.
THANK YOU ANDELA!!!
PS: I am going to update all my apps to show off my new capabilities
