DEV JOURNEY: Why I Built a Developer Community Before I Was a Developer
The honest origin story of building an education platform for Nigerian developers.
I started DEV JOURNEY in 2023 because I was learning to code in an environment where most people around me had never met a working software engineer. That isolation is a design problem, and I wanted to design against it.
My name is Oluwanifemi Bello. By the time I launched DEV JOURNEY, I had been coding seriously for less than a year. That wasn't a credential problem. It was an honest position from which to teach.
The Actual Problem
Most Nigerian developer communities at the time were either too advanced, assuming you already knew how to build things, or too broad: LinkedIn groups masquerading as communities. What was missing was a cohort experience. A place where you shipped things alongside people at the same stage, with someone slightly ahead guiding the process.
What I Built
DEV JOURNEY became a developer education community structured around real projects. Not tutorials. Projects. Members shipped landing pages, APIs, and small products, then got feedback. The feedback loop was the product.
What It Taught Me
Teaching forces clarity. Every time I had to explain a concept to a DEV JOURNEY member, I found out how well I actually understood it. The community made me a better engineer faster than any course could have.
And it gave me the confidence to build Leap. Knowing I could hold a standard, explain a decision, and ship something others would use.
— Oluwanifemi Bello (Nifemi Bello), Founder of DEV JOURNEY & Leap.