100 Days of Code
Happy New Year! There are so many things to be grateful for as I look ahead to another year, and coding is definitely one of them. I started 2019 with only a few months of coding skills and ended 2019 with my first job as a full stack developer! I’ve come a long way in my programming journey, but I still feel like the same coder that I was a year ago; a tiny fish lost in a sea of immense knowledge. I hear time and time again that that feeling never really goes away, it’s all part of being a developer. So, in my efforts to embrace the unknowing I’ve added a few new things to my New Years Resolution.
Build More Projects
Regrettably, I haven’t build many new projects since graduating from coding school and it was really one of the biggest learning tools. I want to build more projects so to accomplish that I hope to achieve the following goals:
- Participate in #100DaysofCode: This is a daily commitment to code 1 hour a day and to Tweet your participation to help keep yourself accountable.
- Complete a new project every month: these don’t have to be big projects, but I should be building something new every 30 days.
Connect with the Coding Community
I’m introverted, but that’s no excuse for lack of effort. When I first started job searching, I set a benchmark to attend one coding event a week. It wasn’t comfortable or easy, and many times it got the better of me, but I learned a lot about the community and met a lot of great people. It broadened my perspective on what programming is and the people that are championing it.
- Attend at least 2 meetups in a month: This can be getting together with classmates, or formal events/meetups, but the goal is to connect more with people who are in the coding community.
- #100DaysofCode: be an active participant and encourage others who are going through the challenge.
- Attend a Conference: I haven’t attended any conferences in 2019 and I want to make sure I attend at least one big conference in 2020 (Angular/Rails?), hopefully more!
- Contribute to Open Source projects
Keep Track of your Achievements
My coding classmate recently got promoted from Apprentice to full-time software engineer and her advice to me was to keep a Hype doc. To keep track of what you’re doing well and what you’ve accomplished. Honestly, I remember my failures more than my successes, so this was welcome advice. I want to remember 2020 for all the things I’ve done well!
- Daily or weekly, reflect on what progress you’ve made and keep bulleted notes on what you’ve accomplished. Don’t let more than a week go by without putting an entry into your hype doc!
Tackling 2020
I’m so excited to the New Year and all the new things I’ll learn in the upcoming year. I hope it’s another year of becoming a more knowledgeable programmer, becoming kinder to myself as a learner, and meeting new people!!!