I have been a victim of passive learning all my life. I understand the concepts, i watch the tutorials, i ace the exams and i get the certification but what else can i show for it apart from certifications? Nothing.
I can even see the same pattern forming again when i decided to go deeper into AI as a backend engineer (i've always loved AI). I have completed five modules out of 16 and i still don't have a working project to show for it. Zero visibility as a software engineer means you're no software engineer. Most especially as a Nigerian.
This pattern has to break today. I want to do it differently and compare. My strategy has always been know everything about what i want to do before building something around it but i have found out that this is a rabbit hole that i might not come out of. Now, the strategy is build something, even if it is something i know absolutely nothing about. I pick something, i find out about the basics i need to know and i start building. I want to name this method Scavenge-Learning. Let's see how far this takes me and what i can accomplish in just one month. Would i stop my AI course? No, infact, i'd be building around AI mostly as Agentic AI, Fintech and Computer Vision systems are what interests me alot.
What would i start with? I am currently working on a finance tracking app as the backend dev and obviously i've been lagging on the task. I would start from competing it, document the process, implement AI into the system where needed and improve on it. Then build, document and deploy an end-to-end RAG-AI system.
I am going to create a write up like this from time to time as a means of documenting my struggles and triumphs. I really want to look back at these write ups months to come and introspect.
If there's anything you're also struggling with as dev or newbie, you can also state it. I'd be glad to help in the few ways i can. Sometimes even writing it out can be the start of a chain reaction to figure the solution out yourself.
Cheers, Agent Kangchie.
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