Better Code Blogs

I am Mofor Emmanuel, disciplined and enthusiastic Software Engineer with experience in planning, designing and developing professional websites, web apps, mobile apps, system software, utility programs etc...

I intend starting this blog to develop my technical writing skills, but not just that. I intend to share my ideas, tips, mistakes and how I overcame them as a developer, and guides along my path in tech, and also write about tech and related topics, tools, methodologies which will go a long way to assist and inform you, thus making your own journey easier and better.

Contributions are very much welcomed.

I love learning, specially new tech, interacting with like-minded, if not greater-minded people, networking, pair-programming, working on embedded systems, electronics, mathematics, physics, mechanics, astrology and of course, listening to, reading, and talking about the Word and Kingdom of God.

I love singing, playing the piano, watching cartoons, romcoms, playing video games, hanging out with friends and doing fun stuff. I also engage in sporting activities, football, basketball, table-tennis.

As much as I'm fascinated by computers and what they did in the past, can do in the present and will do in the future, it never was something I wanted to get into.

Spent some of my childhood days reading about cosmic phenomena, supernovas, black holes, inter-galactic stuff, obsessing on finding constellations, star-observing, and all things space. Was an enthusiastic astronaut in the making.

At that time, I didn't even have a phone or access to the internet, so I would often get some of my elder brother's text books at the time (as he was reading Geology), and would overwhelm myself with content that I'd be so ghoosebumpy and in awe of the wonders of God's creation.
One of the books that got me engaged was Macmillan Earth Science - by Danielson Denecke

As fascinating as the earth's composition, geology, geography and climatology was, earth beyond the ionosphere was like a thriller horror movie that you're scared to watch, but also too anxious to want to know what happens next.

As a Cameroonian, I did dream big, but had to dream real too. I slowly realized the path I wanted to follow was literally beyond the stars, not impossible, but not feasible either, not even in the nearest future.

I then reduced my scope, from wanting to be an astronaut, to wanting to be a pilot. Got into aerodynamics and all things flight, reverse engineered drones, studied flight mechanics and all that stuff, was mentally immature to handle the advanced stuff, but was beyond average. I wasn't very enthusiastic about it, so I gave up eventually. Then wanted to become a priest.

So I got into studying more about the Roman Catholic Church, became an Altar Server, and all the like. But then, as I was doing that, I realized I was good with electronics. Would reverse engineer so many gadgets at my house just to understand the underlying principle, having electronic circuits and boards littered all over, repaired phones, both hardware and software problems, then decided to study Mechatronics/Robotics.

At this time I was a teenager, and never really struggled with school. I'd always top my class even without studying, but wasn't very satisfied at times, cause when I started secondary school, my Physics and Math teachers made me hate the subjects so much.
So when I was in form 3, I got sick. Meningitis. It was terrible. God did have my back, and I emerged victoriously. It cause some brain damage though, that till date I still struggle a little, but I thank God for my life, cause I'm getting better and better.
When I resumed school after I was discharged, I was like an average student. It sucked so bad. Got to form 4 the next year, and there wasn't much progress. Luckily, the crisis outbroke, and we didn't go to school that year. Boy was I glad 😂.
The next year, we were all promoted, and after a year without school, it was kinda hard, but was fun to be back in action. Few months later, I started building solid grounds in Mathematics and Physics, science in general, was doing well for myself. Then a friend of mine told me about coding, shared his experience and what he could do. I was fascinated, and for the curious and adventurous person I am, I got to research about it and started writing basic C++ programs. Luckily, Computer Science was part of our school curriculum, and basic C, Logical programming with Scratch and HTML were some of the things we learned at the time.

I took the liberty to explore deeper, and studied about web development, where I built my first big static mobile-unfriendly website (livescore clone), with no mentorship, tutorials or guidance, just intuition. But sadly that time, I used the File protocol to serve my files, didn't know about the HTTP protocol, or about servers, version control or anything to better and/or simply development. I actually practiced file system version control without knowing what it was. But I lost all my files when the laptop got bad, HDD had to be cleaned, and it wasn't the SATA models that had external cases one could connect to and access files on a different computer. This HDD was one of those old models that had so many pins on them that it was frightful. The kind that you either use it in the laptop or you throw it away. I was using my elder sister's laptop by the way. I got discouraged and discontinued.

When I got to high school, I was so damn good in maths, physics and computer science, that I took them as major courses. I then self-studied C up to structures and unions, cause beyond that was just stuff I didn't see myself using. I also often mentored fellow classmates on programming. Cut the story short, Since I couldn't study Robotics, cause the field wasn't available in my country, I said to myself If I can't build a robot or related systems, I'll build their brains. So I went in for Computer Engineering in the University, where my tech career began officially; here we are. I look back at my journey and see how far I've come. I might not be there yet, but I'm not where I was either. The advanced C Language I used to not very much like, I now use for Systems Programming and interacting with the Linux Kernel and related ABIs. I now build mobile friendly and highly response websites and applications, secure and highly performant backend APIs, Microservices and so much more. Learning truly never ends.

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