Its a day that promises to be great, and DevChronicles has the privilege of introducing another Developer to you. He's a man of culture, constantly chasing the perfection of his craft. Some of you might already know him - Michael Trojan Okoh.
Tame impala - Elephant
Hello Trojan, it's a pleasure to have you here. Can you tell us a bit about the journey that has brought you this far?
Good morning. Well, growing up I had always been interested in computers. There was this laptop at home, it was out of bounds, but the temptation to touch it grew larger and larger until one day I did. I would type my school notes on it, and do some other basic things. It was then I knew I wanted to work with computers. Anyway, my dad caught me on the laptop one day, but funny enough he said nothing. A few weeks to my birthday, he asked me if I could handle a laptop to which I agreed to enthusiastically. Moving on, I learnt assembly and a bit of C from my dad who is an electrical engineer, and built alarm systems. Along the line, I took an interest in hacking, but with the advice from an uncle of mine, I began to walk down a straighter path. I had thoughts of making an operating system, but soon realized it was almost impossible for a single person to make an operating system. Then I delved into the web. Started with the front end, then eventually settled on the backend. In line with my passion, I decided to study computer science, it was not what I expected. So much mathematics was involved, and I wasn’t impressed with a lot of the lecturers.
Has there been any time when you cried because of work?
There was a time when I was working on a project for two hospitals I was one of those guys that thought he could survive without git. You couldn’t blame me though, Bitbucket had down times, and Github wasn’t offering free private repos. Anyway, I stored my code on my hard drive and it was stolen. I cried. I announced everywhere I could even in the chapel and promised rewards. If someone asked me what was wrong, I would burst into tears. It was so bad that I wrote my exams on drip because of that event. Anyway, it's been three years so I am fine now.
If you won a lottery now, what would you do?
Let me not lie, I might not save…Ok, I would save, but not as much as I should.
Ok, let me put a cap on the lottery prize. 500,000 dollars, what would you do with it?
I would look for the nearest European countries that would give me an investment citizenship, invest in the country, buy bitcoins with the rest, and stash a bit, keep some for enjoyment and of course Invest in some of the projects I have lying around.
That’s very important, there are always projects lying around. Anyway, since you started your career as a software developer, what has been your greatest achievement? I mean, what have you been involved in that gave you the utmost sense of fulfilment.
Funny enough, my happiest points didn't necessarily come from software development itself. I write technical articles, and once in a while someone emails me to tell me how much my article has been a help to the person. More than just acknowledging my article, telling me that it actually helped fix a problem fills me with happiness. Someone once emailed me to tell me that my article helped their engineering department to structure an application. That night, I bought “asun” and slept properly.
If you could give your past self some advice on how to go about his tech journey, or prevent some mistakes, or speed up things, what advice would you give?
First thing, I would find a way to convince my past self to convince my dad not to let me go to school so that I can use my school fees to buy bitcoin. Then I would use the money to get lots of nano degrees. I know BSc has its value in some aspects in tech, but I haven’t had to really use mine so far. Funny enough, my dad gave me the option of dropping out and doing something else, but I decided to go on with school. Apart from that though, my journey so far has shaped the kind of person I am though, and I am pretty satisfied with how I am.
What operating system would you prefer– The OSX, Linux, or the Windows?
Anytime, any day, the OSX, well it is called macOS. On a server, I would obviously prefer Linux.
What song would you say describes your personality?
That’s a hard question. I can be a very random person, so picking a single song is hard. But if I were to pick a single song, it would probably be “Elephants by Tame Impala”.
What’s up with the song?
It's psychedelic in nature. I love psychedelic songs. They are my jam. I would share the song with you, check it out.
Thanks a lot, would check it out. We hear you are currently working on something - Abeg.app. Can you tell us a bit about it?
Well, it's still currently in production, so I won’t reveal all to you. But as the name implies, “Abeg”, it’s a platform on which people can be funded.
Nice, sounds like something I would use a lot. Are you currently in to any open source project or are you working on any open source project?
I am actively not contributing to any, but I release an open source project every 1.5 months. Recently, I created an API to retrieve the bank logos, and bank codes for your payment app depending on whether you are using flutterwave or paystack. Someone just made a pull request with a list of bank USSDs which I just merged and made a release.
That’s awesome. We would make your github profile available for people that want to check stuff out. Now moving on to the less serious questions – What is your relationship status?
Mnnn. Alone.
That was a quick reply. Ok, what’s your ideal partner type? There might just be someone reading this perfect for you.
First of all, I don’t have sense. It’s important to know that. So she must be someone that is ready to accommodate me. An ex of mine broke up with me because I don’t take things too seriously. Although I have changed a bit, the person coming must be able to take a joke. Also, have a job. You don’t have to be wealthy, but you must have something tangible you are doing.
There are still more questions. When would you be ready for marriage?
When I was 18, I was planning on getting married by 25, now I am not even bothered. I am not in a relationship so, no marriage.
Have you ever been infatuated with someone before from afar, and how did it end if it happened?
Well, the relationship didn’t happen but it ended in tears. Compared to other crushes I might have had, I walked up to her and expressed my feelings. She asked me to give her some time. Long story short, it did not work out, and I began thinking of relocating out of the country.
Do you listen to your heart or your head?
My head. I never listen to my heart; it doesn’t have sense
Has your tech journey influenced your view on human relationships?
Not necessarily. My view on relationships stems from how I grew up. I didn’t go out much, so I had time to study people a bit. So, I won’t say I am an expert on people, but I understand them a bit.
I think I resonate with you on this quite a lot. So, the final question. What advice would you give a tech newbie just starting out on the path in tech?
Before I drop any advice, let me tell you what I wanted for myself. I always admired the people at Apple, and as at 2011 I knew the key people in the apple software team. Currently, there is no apple event I have not watched. Even the ones from before I was born. What I am trying to say is that you must be really passionate about what you want to do. Everything I did, I wanted the quality to be as good as apple’s own. I always told myself that I wanted to be a CTO by 25, I am not yet 25 and I am already doing stuff like that now. I followed the people doing the things I wanted to do, and I was obsessed with perfection. You must be ready to put in the effort. On twitter, people say they are in for the money. There’s nothing wrong with that, but personally, it was passion that brought me in. If you want to be a JavaScript ninja, research, keep writing Javascript. Don’t be a legacy dev that refuses to learn a new technology. Be consistent, and learn things on your own.
Thank you very much for this enlightening session. It's been a pleasure having this conversation with you. I wish you success in whatever it is you are doing, and also, love.
Amen ooo. It was a pleasure to be here.
Trojan was a down to earth guy, it was impossible not to be free with him. We hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as we did. Check out his Twitter profile and his github repos in the links below. We are sure you'll find something priceless there. Tune in tomorrow to take part in our conversation with Edidiong Asikpo.
Twitter: twitter.com/ichtrojan?s=20
Github: GitHub.com/ichtrojan