# MY WEEK ONE EXPERIENCE AT BLOCKFUSE LABS: COHORT III SOFTWARE ENGINEERING

Last week was special. It was the beginning of Cohort III at Blockfuse Labs, and even though I was part of Cohort II, this one already feels different.

From the first day, everything was exciting. We started with a strong and inspiring welcome speech from our CEO, Mr. Adaaku Peter S. He told us to take this journey seriously and to prepare ourselves for big moments that can change our lives.

Then our founder, Longs Penum Gotar came in. He didn’t waste time at all. He greeted us, and after a brief introduction of ourselves, we jumped straight into teaching. He started by explaining the basics of computers, what they are, how they work, and why we need to understand what goes on inside them. The class was full of interesting talks, and everyone was excited to learn.

It was funny because many people use computers every day, but they never stop to ask,
“How does this thing even work?”

We also had a second session with Mr. Dimkar Yilkit, and that class was another eye-opener. He explained how computers collect data from things like keyboards and microphones. Then he showed us how the computer stores that data using only 0s and 1s, called binary. That’s the only language a computer understands.

So the interesting question was, “If the computer only understands 0 and 1, how do we see things like letters and pictures on the screen?”

That led us into a fun topic called Number Bases. We learnt how to change numbers from Decimal (normal numbers) to Binary and Hexadecimal. We even did some practice with number conversions. Now, I understand how the computer takes our input, changes it into machine language, processes it, and shows it back to us in a way we can read.

Another big part of our week was learning about Operating Systems and how they work.

We were taught the difference between GUI and CLI:

GUI (Graphical User Interface) is the normal way we use computers, clicking with the mouse, dragging files, and opening folders with icons.

CLI (Command Line Interface) is when we type commands into a black screen (called Terminal) to talk directly to the computer.

At first, the terminal looked scary, but we started learning how to use it.
We learnt commands to:

<i>Open folders</i>

<i>List files</i>

<i>Create new files</i>

Even shut down the computer, all without using a mouse

As someone who has been in Cohort II, I already had an idea of some of these things, but this time, I understood them even better. The teaching was deeper, the explanation was clearer, and I loved how we broke everything down step by step.

It’s only Week One, and I already feel like I’ve learnt so much again.

If this is just the beginning, then I can’t wait to see what the rest of the journey looks like.