Beginnings / Part 1 of 4
An old XAMPP, a borrowed PC and my first real system
Event date / Last revised / 2 min read
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In August 2018 I started an internship at Icyumba Mpahabwenge, a stationery business. I was a Level 3 Computer Applications student at APENA TVET School in Kirehe District, Eastern Province. The internship gave me something I didn't have at home: a computer with internet.
The job was printing, photocopying and serving customers. In between, I watched web development tutorials.
Learning on the wrong version
The only way to run PHP on that computer was the copy of XAMPP I could find and install, and it was old. The tutorials I followed used features from newer versions of PHP. I didn't know that yet.
So I typed exactly what the instructor typed, and it failed. Code that worked on screen didn't work for me. For a while I thought I was the problem.
Eventually I worked out that the tutorial and my environment didn't match. Once I understood that, every error became a question I could answer: is this my code, or is this my version? I learned to read error messages properly, check when a feature was introduced, and rewrite code to work with what I had.
The first thing I shipped
By November I had a working stock inventory system: products, stock in, stock out and current levels. On 23 November 2018 I recorded a walkthrough and published it on YouTube.
It was small, and by today's standards it was rough. But it was the first time I had taken an idea all the way to something that worked and that someone else could watch.
What I took from it
Constraints are a teacher. An old XAMPP forced me to understand why code works, not just copy it. Most systems I have built since were for places with old computers, weak internet or small budgets, and that first mismatch prepared me for them.
Match the tool to the tutorial, or understand the gap. Many beginner frustrations are version problems, not ability problems. Knowing that early saved me a lot of self-doubt.
Record the work. That video felt unnecessary at the time. Today it is the earliest public proof of where I started.