I have been where you are

Growing up in Nigeria in the mid-1990s, I never had access to a computer. Almost no one around me did. But I had something else. I had this relentless need to understand how things worked. I would unscrew VCR rewinders, televisions, Walkmans, anything I could get my hands on. I wasn't trying to fix them. I just wanted to see what was inside.

And every single time, I was struck by how beautifully everything was laid out. Every component had a place. Every wire had a purpose. It was systematic and elegant in a way that stuck with me. The hard part was putting everything back together, and getting better at that, methodically, was my first real lesson in troubleshooting.

Errors are at the heart of learning

When my family moved to the UK, I gravitated to computers immediately. At college I discovered macros in Microsoft Access, and something clicked: you could record a sequence of steps and replay them whenever you wanted. Projects meant to take three weeks, I would finish in a weekend, then spend the rest of my time helping classmates finish theirs.

That is when I noticed something. I kept seeing the same bugs show up across different people. I'd fix one, and the same error would appear with someone else, but by then I already knew its signature. Debugging software, I realised, traced all the way back to those afternoons unscrewing televisions. The same instinct. The same patience. The same curiosity.

From doubt into capability

Years later, contracting in the Midlands, the junior developers around me were struggling, not with the code, but with confidence. They couldn't see the path from where they were to where they wanted to be. I started helping them in the evenings, then ran a meetup. One evening driving home a thought hit me: there are people beyond my physical location who need this. That thought became Codehance.

You do not need a degree. You do not need a privileged start. You need the right tools and someone who has been where you are.

The landscape has changed completely. My graduates already in the field are earning many times what they used to, because AI lets them scale in ways that weren't possible before. You no longer need to learn everything before you can build. But there is an urgent flip side: AI is about to widen the gap between those who have access and those who don't. If education does not reach underprivileged communities now, that gap becomes permanent.

That is what Codehance is. It is the belief that curiosity and drive can lead you to build something real, something that benefits others, and something that gets you paid in the process. I have been where you are. Let's build.