Developer Journey | DevRetro2022

Web Development

I have been programming for a long time but had never truly crossed out of tutorial hell long enough to create real projects. 2022 was the turning point. Early on in March, after clearing my semester exams, I plunged into development with w3schools, FreeCodeCamp, and created live sites for the first time as FrontendMentor challenge solutions.

Google Cloud Ready Program

Taking part in the GoogleCloudReady program was the biggest learning opportunity of the year for me. Learning to use Google Cloud, performing tasks and completing learner labs, getting my hands dirty with the cloud console, using tools like Docker, Kubernetes, and Jenkins for the first time, learning the basics of SQL etc.

Getting to learn about underlying web technologies and setting up servers and load-balancing services was cool!

Competitive Programming

Started the year with Starters21, and kept on solving problems whenever I could. Took part in a few competitive programming events, competing and learning as much as I could: Technix and Techfluence among others.

I persisted throughout the year, and it paid off in November when along with Smitesh Arolkar, I won first place in an interstate competitive coding event named CodeWars.

Small victories serve as motivation to keep pushing for growth!!!

Technical Writing

Writing is something I've always loved, but summoning the courage to document my journey IN PUBLIC was a 2022 achievement. Hashnode gave me not only an outlet for my thoughts and victories but also a drawing board for future endeavours. The community also acts as a huge learning platform, to learn from fellow programmers and creators.

Cornucopia

As a student, the year is filled with a lot of wonderful learning that doesn't necessarily fit into a major niche. Among these, learning to use Git and GitHub stand out for me in 2022. Not only did Git make my many projects easier to manage, but also allowed me to take part in my first open-source program (GSSOC).

The latter part of 2022 was spent engrossed in Data Structures and Algorithms: learnt about Linked Lists, Trees, Queues, Stacks and Graphs, along with hashing, searching and sorting algorithms. DSA kept me on my toes:)

As the year came to an end, kept going. Refreshed my python skills by creating a few projects as part of my December learnings. Also played around with Tweepy and the Twitter API: look forward to creating a Twitter bot with the team.