Even Internship Roles Have Requirements… (Part One)

Most junior developers underestimate how much foundational knowledge is required even for internship roles.

Back in 2018, while teaching myself HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, I built a few websites by editing HTML templates. At that point, I was convinced I had “arrived.” I confidently introduced myself as a software developer.

After all, I could tweak templates, use Bootstrap 4, buy domains, and deploy websites via cPanel. In my mind, I was job-ready.

I applied to multiple roles including internships and got no responses. Now I know why no one bothered to respond to my applications. 😂

Sometime in 2019, I discovered that my neighbor, Seun, was a Senior Software Developer at Andela. I was excited. I introduced myself, told him I was a developer, and offered to assist with his work in exchange for learning opportunities.

It took about two months before he invited me over and gave me what I thought would be my first real task migrating content from an old website to a new one using Puppeteer. He walked me through the package, showed me the documentation, and explained how to approach it.

I spent the entire next day stuck.

One bug after another. No meaningful progress.

That evening, after work (I was working as a librarian in a private library in Yaba at the time), I went back to him for help.

Instead of helping me solve the task, he did something unexpected.

He asked me to write a simple for loop in JavaScript.

Instinctively, I reached for Google.

He stopped me.

“Use your head,” he said.

That was the moment I realized I didn’t actually know how to write a for loop. I didn’t understand how it worked.

Everything I “knew” about programming was surface-level:

Watching and coding along with tutorials (mostly from Brad Traversy )

Editing HTML templates

Copying patterns without understanding them

I had zero depth.

He then gave me one piece of advice that changed everything: Go and learn JavaScript, take your time to know the basics, he recommended the book Eloquent JavaScript. I got the book and started reading, this time around with the mindset to understand how things actually work.

To be continued in Part Two…