Read the above title again, We talked, We ate, We learned and WeCode. You noticed that word WeCode, nope it not a typo it actually a name of a certain group in FCT Abuja, Nigeria. Please forgive me if I said I didn’t know about this awesome group till recently, when I was browsing through an Event App on my phone for any tech event around my area I found Tech Meet Up for Saturday 16th Sept, 2017 and I signed up. I will never regret that click.

My first WeCodeNg Tech MeetUp at Aiivon Innovation Hub

Locating the venue was difficult but Google Map was available so you know the rest.

The technology revolution will change a lot in Nigeria but a friend of mine once said “Even the Devil is afraid of Nigerians…! Yep the scheduled time was 10:00 am but African Time (and this is a problem technology will forever fight), so I was 10 minutes late, I ran out and sent a tweet.

Well not till I got to the venue that I realized I was actually about to attend a Nigerian Event so African Time is paramount.

But I guess these guys didn’t work with the African Time, probably here even before the receptionist, I didn’t snap this. Pic Credit WhatsApp Group another not African Timer

By 11am guest arrivals and it was time for the MeetUp

Two topics were discussed

1. Web Development using ANGULAR 2/4 and ASP.NET core
2. Introduction to Scikit Python Library

Yep I learn a lot from the two guest speakers, I learned to install and run Angular 2 and ASP.net although he used VS Code.

I always didn’t like VS Code, I am an Atom type of guy, please let not do that fight here.

I learned that machine learning was a lot easier than I though it should be, seriously with just 3 lines of codes and this guy’s AI was already predicting that the next person coming in will be a guy. At a point I thought I was in one of those Marvel’s Avengers movies: The Age of Ultron, this second speaker used Python.

I’m a JavaScript guy and for Python, I think you should know this “I hate snakes!!!”.

So we talked, we learned but don’t forget I also mentioned we ate check the picture below

Now why will these bunch of people call themselves WeCodeNg, I’ve been here for more than an hour and I’m doing a checklist, We Talked, We ate, We learn but did we code? hold on you will see.

These guys in the above picture proved to me that one won’t necessarily need a YouTube with some unlimited Data to get a good tutorial. We have; The Serverless Framework guy, just by looking at this guy you will understand he doesn’t really need a server he should be the server, not just his body size this guy’s brain is the server, if you meet him and you don’t get any knowledge out of him then you should weight heavier than he is. The next guy is Insight Africa he is literally Inside Africa even the way he talks he gives you historical event and facts before laying down the answer, if that is not an insight I don’t know what to call that. The lone Lady on the panel don’t let the feminine fool you she’s also the bank of the panel not a metaphor, she build the app of the same bank I presently run my active account, like the mafias will say it ‘Trust the guy with the bank’ only in this case she’s a lady, well let me just say after meeting this lady I am now sure my money is safe hands at least if I can’t get to the bank I can get to her. The next guy, I wouldn’t want to upset because he look and act like an AI he can probably teach you something just by mare looking at you, Python… and finally my kind of guy Yeeeesss JavaScript, PHP and all the cool stuff look at him he is actually the only guy with glasses, I bet if Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gate should come looking for the computer geek we will all point him.

A panel of these guys and some set of questions from all of us; now that’s call coding so we did code. The 4 interesting questions for the panel from the audience.

Question 1: How did you combine schooling and learning how to coding?

don’t let your grades suffer, make use of the tutorials available and this kinds of Tech MeetUp.

Before all these tutorials, meet up, libraries, frameworks and stable internet was not easily accessible. At least overnight browsing at a cyber cafe was the trend, we developers had 3 names back then: when they want to respect you: Software guy, when you want them to pay you: Web Designer and finally they don’t understand what you do and they feel you are making money for no reason: Yahoo boy.

Question 2: How do you migrate from Learning code to expert?

As a developer you are always learning, Try to put something out for people to use and wait for the harsh feedbacks, Programming is not easy

Question 3: Can you use only php to build a web side?
now this question is here because it exposed some dark secrets that some people were plotting to assassinate the ever loving PHP.

It depends on what you want to do with your web app, although php is only limited to server side you may at some point need Javascript for the client side but yes you can build a web site with php.

Question 4: Can you learn VueJs without learning vanilla javascript or jQuery first?

For any language you want to learn it’s better you understand the basics first then learn the libraries or framework that may come with it.

So you see We talked, We ate, We learned and We code. For now that’s all we did, if you want to know when next this is happening visit www.wecode.ng.

If you have any similar event coming up please you can send me a tweet visit inidaname.github.io don’t forget to follow me I always follow back.