I am beginning my entry into dev blogging this year. I will be starting with the 2022 wrap-up. I am sharing what and how the year 2022 shaped me as a developer. What I slipped at and what I achieved. Without further ado let's begin.
First of all, I wish to tell you that I was already familiar with Java, C++ and Python, MySQL. So I thought let's try and code something which could be helpful.
Even though it happens to be very simple. I would definitely put in the effort and learn new things to make it
This thought marked the beginning of my actual development journey.
So I had no guided path.
No teacher took my coding interest seriously. I took a drop year for JEE and messed it up. To make things worse my Laptop previously on Windows starts to hang.
Now, you might be feeling pity for me.
But that's not how I see it.
I see it as my mistakes for others' learnings.
Now back on track. I already had a good understanding of Java, C++ and Python. So I thought let's make some projects.
I Googled about best use cases of these 3.
I got to know that Python is the easiest and has better community support as well as rich libraries.
What else would you expect from a coding language?
Hence I thought to get started with making projects using Python. I was already familiar with Matplotlib, Numpy and Django.
I thought let's begin with what I have on my plate first. Since I was already familiar with HTML and CSS, I was willing to give web dev a try.
Unawareness
Now here's the beginning of the messy part. I was unaware about
1 git and GitHub
2 roadmap
This led me to a roller coaster ride.
Django Experience
I started to learn Django.
First I learnt how a framework is more of software rather than a library.
Next, I learnt the importance of a virtual environment.
How to create my first Django server.
How Django allows us to create multiple apps for a server.
How it's based on MVT.
How we can deal with requests.
Save user-filled data.
Now as I tried to make changes to the working code it would work fine up to a level but then halted.
Since I had no idea of git. I felt really sad about the project.
Advice
1 So I would advise everyone to learn git before they learn a framework.
Or if you have started to learn a framework learn the git and GitHub parallelly.
2 Have a roadmap. I would suggest roadmap.sh here you will get roadmaps for all popular tech stacks. Else you may go and look for it on Google.
After watching many of my projects breaking. I felt I am not good enough with this maybe I will return to it in future.
This is the reason why I tried to shift to video and photo editing. I gave it a shot. I was able to edit videos in a span of 2 months but didn't know where to use it. I couldn't freelance as I was underage.
I stayed cool and thought let's try app dev. Researched a bit about it.
Android Dev
I came to know about Kotlin and learnt it. Since I already knew Java it was a cakewalk with slight changes.
I was enjoying it but my laptop had low configuration and I wasn't able to learn native dev. As Android Studio didn't work smoothly. So I had to figure out something else.
Flutter Dev
This urge led me to Flutter and Dart 🎯.
I find Dart to be exact replica of Java.
I started to learn the basics and made a few really basic apps such as a calculator. Changing the photo on button click etc.
Basically, I was familiarising with stateful widgets.
It was during this time I learnt there's something like git.
But the instructor didn't tell us what it is.
He said just ignore it's unnecessary.
Stopped the course in the middle and...
He came up saying there's this course on his website and tagged it as $399. Something which wasn't quite affordable for me.
Now again not know about the roadmap and the absence of guidance.
Now since I was also preparing for JEE and the course was getting tougher. I took a distance from Coding.
Web Scraping
Next, I thought let's get back to my good Python. Suddenly a video on web Scraping with Python popped up. Since I already knew some basics of HTML, CSS and JavaScript. I thought perfect I can do that.
I learnt Scrapy and then Playwright.
Now I can Scrape data from ...
Now I can Scrape data from dynamic sites as well. I will soon be deploying them.
Now that I have learnt about git and GitHub I am willing to be consistent.
Linux Experience
I also dual-booted my laptop to Mint Mate. This sparked my curiosity in me to learn about basic Linux commands.
Bash Scripting, Cron job and open source.
I now know about Roadmaps so I would not leave things incomplete.
They are really necessary if you are learning all by yourself.
I would also say read stack overflow and documentation.
I surely don't remember it all and will have to revise but it is a nice journey.
The reality of coders from small towns
Don't feel pity for me for not making big in tech.
At least today I can express all of it to you.
This is how you will find the journey of a typical Indian Coder from Small towns and villages ( me).
Helping others
So, I will try to bring some awareness by sharing all the good with them. I have also started a new Whatsapp group for my batchmates, where I update them with tech events, podcasts, live streams, etc. My sole motto is to uplift all I can.
This was my dev journey from 2022.
College Experience
Hoping to make some amazing friends like Chirag, Yash Raj and have more exposure.
I get many tech events from Chirag.
In fact, he's the one who encouraged me to be on @Twitter
I am in my freshman year at a Tier3 College BPIT.
A teacher mocks Baap of IIT 🤣.
Unhealthy Competition
Surely there are people I know here in College who secretively apply for opportunities without telling me, even after I ask them.
But I won't blame them, the feeling of competition is so deep-rooted in them, that, they manage to get open Source fellowship with it too.
My learnings come from my setbacks looking towards awakening my Mangekyou Sharingan.
Looking forward to cooperating and growing in the year 2023 like never before.
That's it for this post. 🔥