My Developer Journey, Dev Retro 2022.

TLDR; Notice.

How it all started 🤹‍♂️:-

In my career as a developer, many things came by working in different communities, be it Web Development, Open Source, Blogging, and many more.

Are you excited to know about how I got into so many fields?

Let's Begin!

When I was in my 4th semester of graduation, I joined scaler academy as their campus ambassador. There I got to interact with other folks from different colleges in India. All of them were enthusiastic about technology. While interacting with the folks, I got to know about many communities and programs like Microsoft Student Ambassador, Google Developer Students Club, Major League Hacking, Google Summer of Code, and a lot more.

✨Applied for Microsoft Student Ambassador:-

During my scaler tenure, I decided to give it a try and applied for the program but later on got rejected for the reason Seems less enthusiastic towards communities. I took it as feedback and since it was just the beginning of my career I decided to work more hard on my skills.

✨Joined Major League Hacking Community:-

Some of my friends from the scaler community suggested joining this community where I got to interact with some amazing folks from all over the world both freshers and experienced in the tech industry. The discord server of this community is very active, they constantly host mentor connect sessions, fun trivia games, doubt-solving sessions, and many more.

✨Beginning of my short Machine Learning journey:-

While I was in MLH and the scaler community, I got to know about various fields in the tech industry like Machine Learning, Web Development, App Development, etc. Previously I was only aware of coding that too specifically doing Data Structures and Algorithms and C++. So I decided to pick Machine Learning and started exploring the field, I directly jumped into learning different machine learning algorithms like Linear Regression, Polynomial Regression, KNN, etc since I was not aware of the track I should follow in this journey.

✨My first hackathon experience:-

After gaining some basic knowledge in Machine Learning, we decided to participate in a hackathon by MLH. We built the project with help of Python, Machine Learning and Jython. During the hackathon, we faced a lot of problems in the integration of the ML model with our front end and also the ML model was showing a false accuracy rate. Later on, we got to realize that to be successful in the ML journey you should have a good grasp of Statistics, Mathematics, Problem Solving skills etc. I decided to drop the idea of making a career in ML, don't get me wrong here that "I was getting a lot of errors and that's why I dropped ML" that's not the case, I didn't find ML too fascinating at least to me.

✨The web development journey begins here:-

I was curious about "How different websites are built?" and what technologies are used to build them, I did some research about website building and later on found that for basic websites all you need is HTML, CSS and Javascript. I started learning HTML with some blogs and youtube channels and made some projects with the help of HTML. After some time I started learning CSS and applied it to my all HTML projects. Made some good projects with the help of just HTML and CSS but later from the web community, I found that there is a lot more to cover in HTML and CSS like flexbox, positions, box model, semantic HTML etc. Some of my projects are listed below:-

From the web community, I got to know that as a web developer having a portfolio will boost your profile and help recruiters go through your projects easily, So I decided to make a portfolio with the help of HTML and CSS which you can find below

Learning a Version Control System is also important in the Developer journey, so started with git and GitHub, and hosted all my projects on GitHub.

✨Started learning in public:-

I started using LinkedIn to post my learnings of web development, I also started writing blogs and putting youtube videos regarding my projects.

✨Python for College Projects:-

In our 5th semester, I had subjects of DBMS and SDL which require a mini project to be built at that time python was booming in the tech industry so I decided to use it for building desktop applications, specifically I used Tkinter which is a GUI library of python for building desktop applications.

✨Open Source Contributions:-

GitHub is the home of open-source projects, while scrolling through various open-source projects I decided to make some good open-source contributions. I participated in many open-source programs and made some good contributions to the projects. Initially, I started by improving Readme.md of projects and later on contributed to some web development projects.

✨Applied for MLH Fellowship:-

Since it's been a while since I am part of MLH, I was aware of MLH Fellowship but was not ready at the beginning of my dev career. After gaining experience in every field I decided to give it a try and applied to the program. My application got selected and was invited for the first round of interviews, but unfortunately got rejected in the first interview due to poor communication skills. Time to move on again.

✨Starting with React.Js a Javascript UI library:-

After gaining some exposure in web development, I decided to pick up a library to speed up the development process because building production-ready websites with just HTML, CSS and javascript is not enough. Took an udemy course and I am still learning from it.

How it is going 👨‍💻:-

Currently, I am working on advanced concepts of reactjs and javascript to excel in my career as a full-stack engineer. Based on project requirements I am also working in the web3 domain. My 2023 goal is to start with one backend framework and AWS cloud.

My Achievements 🥇:-

1. Got my first freelance client as a technical writer.

2. Completed my tenure as a Google Developer Students Club Lead at my campus.

3. Completed hacktoberfest, an open-source program.

4. Got my first paid internship and later converted into an FTE.

2023 Goals 🏋️‍♂️:-

1. Learn one backend framework like NodeJs.

2. Getting familiar with AWS Cloud.

Conclusion 😀:-

If you are beginning your career as a developer then try to divide your goals into short-term goals and long-term goals, this will help you to structure your learning journey properly and also you will not feel overwhelmed at the same time. Keep the long-term goal constant and let your short-term goal change as soon as you achieve your previous short-term goal.

Hope you find my journey insightful 😁.

Connect with me 🤝:-

Linkedin

GitHub