A Challenge I Overcame as a Backend Developer

My name is Muwaffaq Aliyu, a software developer heavy on the frontend but also know my way around the server side of things i.e. backend development. I have about 4 years experience in software development and I am also self-taught. I became a developer after graduating uni in 2019 and I was wondering what to do with my life because I believe the course I studied in Uni wasn't that relevant (it was Biology 🤫).

When I started off as a backend developer, I had a lot of challenges which normally comes with the territory considering software development isn't for the weak as most people say and as a self taught developer there were more difficulties navigating through the development ecosystem.

My main challenge as a backend developer started when I was added to a Node.js repo that was about 3 years old and navigating through the code base and understanding it was a bit tricky. I was then assigned a task to schedule an email that will be sent out every sunday morning by 1:00pm. This became a major challenge for me as I was new to the backend ecosystem and the implementations I was familiar with was mainly creating endpoints and the MVC (Models, Views, Controllers) structure. I spent a couple of days trying to understand previous implementations of the email scheduling which was done using Nodemailer and Cron.

I handled the implementation by consulting an experienced developer who was familiar with the kind of implementation i was trying to achieve, he gave me a few pointers on how to go about the implementations of email scheduling and I also went through a couple of documentations and a bit of help from Chat-GPT (there is no shame in that), I was then able to properly carry out the implementation to schedule emails properly.

I am currently embarking on a new journey by enrolling in HNG Internship for the second time, I got dropped at stage 8 the first time that was HNG-8, so I am back to finish what I started and that is to reach the final stage of HNG and become a HNG finalist. HNG has helped me in learning how to collaborate with other developers, improved my communication skills the first time I joined and also helped me work under pressure and deadlines. If you want to build on your skills I suggest you enroll in the HNG-internship.