“Courses are always a certain motivation, i.e. you have invested money in y...

rabiarahi

– Tell us about yourself, what did you do before you came to the courses at TeachMeSkills?

– Now I am 28 years old, and all my conscious past (in 2015 I graduated from the Military Academy of the Republic of Belarus, the faculty of communications and automated control systems) I served in the 120th mechanized brigade, went from a communications platoon commander to a senior engineer of the communications battalion. I always wanted to develop both personally and professionally. And at some point, when I mastered and studied everything in my specialty, I decided to go to study for a master's degree. But, in the army, it turned out that not everything is so simple: any of your desires must be approved by the leadership, which told me not to be stupid and to enjoy life in the troops. A year later, the situation repeated itself: after my attempt to re-enter the master's program, people higher in rank than me assumed that I wanted to escape from the armed forces. This answer puzzled me, because initially I wanted to develop within the framework of my profession. This is how I first started thinking that I wanted to work in a freer atmosphere, rather than live my whole life following orders and commands from other people.

In 2017, I started thinking about the IT sphere, everything about it attracted me - from the way of thinking of the people who work there to the corporate ethics of companies. At that time, it was a social media marketing service completely different life for me. I remember how I talked to my classmates who graduated from BSUIR and were already working in IT. They advised me to read dev.by first, so that I could understand how the IT sphere in Belarus lives and develops. On this portal, I learned about the Space platform, which hosted various IT events and conferences. So I began to visit almost everything I could, met guys from different companies and was inspired by this friendly atmosphere. At this stage (about two years ago), I gradually became interested in development, I only had to decide which language to learn to change my life.

- So you started by going to events, but didn't code anything? And why did you eventually decide to master Swift?

– Well... if I say that I haven't coded anything, I'll be lying (smiles). My portfolio of completed works includes a web service for the department where I studied. I just didn't like the web at all. And when I started to dive into the world of IT, I realized that a person spends much more time on a mobile phone than on a computer.

So I quickly decided that I wanted to do mobile development. I chose iOS after attending a number of events, where I was once again convinced that no matter what first programming language you learn, it will be equally difficult. And I just listened to my inner voice, which told me: "you've always liked Apple." Indeed, for me, Apple, both then and now, is associated with premium technology and a solvent audience. And of course, I started watching and studying something myself.


– It turns out that you realized that you wanted to do iOS development a year and a half ago, but you only finished the courses in November 2020. What have you been doing all this time?

– At that time, my status was “it’s complicated” (laughs). The military has a concept of “contract”, which is concluded for 5 years. Since I wanted to get a job right after the courses, I had to wait until the end of this contract – I couldn’t terminate it early (otherwise, I would have to pay an astronomical sum, which I didn’t have).

So I started studying something on my own: the first step was Usov’s book, the second was official Apple documentation, the third was video tutorials on YouTube. A little later, I discovered swiftbook.ru – an interesting site that contains tons of useful information specifically on iOS development, starting from the most basic level and ending with application architectures.


– Let’s get ahead of ourselves a little: when you came to the courses at TeachMeSkills, how many lessons did the knowledge you had acquired yourself last for?

– Let’s say that I mastered about half of the course on my own. At that time, I already had a good understanding of tables and collections, but I had some gaps in working with the network and databases. I think that it’s not easy to understand such things on your own, and it’s good when you have a mentor who can explain these complex and overwhelming things in simple language.
– Let’s rewind again. Tell us why you decided to take programming courses and what criteria did you use to choose them?

–Courses are always a certain motivation, i.e. you have at least spent your money, invested it in yourself, so you should take everything to the maximum. As for the choice of courses, there is a small selection of schools in Minsk that make a quality product. For me, the main selection criteria were: the program, reviews of graduates from different schools, the size of the group and the number of classroom hours to study the material. So, with the help of Google, I learned about TeachMeSkills, went to an open lesson, was very pleased and, as a result, signed up for the course.


– Tell us more about the educational process both in the classroom and outside of it. How much time did you spend on mastering new material per week?

– The first 10 classes were structured like this: we studied something new for one third of the class, then applied this new thing in practice and made simple applications right in the classroom. After the 10th class, more serious homework assignments began and we devoted the first hour to analyzing them, i.e. closing gaps and solving problematic issues. The remaining two hours we studied new material with the expectation that we would need to practice a lot at home.