Hello friends,
So it's been 197 days of writing this blog. Of course omitting the times I grouped multiple days together making this whole thing less accurate...but oh well. As well not considering the months I programmed before in order to actually make this blog a reality. This whole thing really came as a sudden impulse to just track my honest journey of going from absolutely no coding experience to hopefully enough to do all the crazy things in my head. Well, let's take inventory of where I'm at.
Thoughts
When I first started out I was really reliant on the tutorials and AI generated code. I didn't question much how things were done but tried as much as I knew how to question why. In this stage of progression I feel much more confident questioning the responses I find online. I've also learned, through experience, the various quirks that allow programmers to pick the technologies that best suit them. For example I know now the importance of HTML templates after going from Vue to React. As well I'm less likely to just use the first library ChatGPT spits out in it's response. Like when I made this website it recommended CLSX to help with combining JS and HTML classes. But in reality there is no reason to use an external library to handle something as simple as template literals and JavaScript.
I also feel much more confident when approaching things like LeetCode problems. While yes I'm still bad at them, I'm way better than I used to be. I'm much more capable of thinking things through and say I'm using JS, fetching the specific methods and built in functions that will help me get the job done. I think it also helped to do some of these with something like C++ since I had to rely on really low level solutions. And it's also fun to do these types of questions because I don't need AI, nor should I even consider it. The whole point of doing these practice questions is to practice, the solution doesn't matter. What matters is how you got there, how you optimized, how you deciphered the shitty LeetCode wording and came to a working solution. So safe to say I've really improved on that front.
What Hasn't Changed
My drive and ambition to learn and grow hasn't slowed an inch. I'm still as curious and even more so learn all there is in this field. I love learning about technological advances, making things work on my own, reading about the field. It's all still extremely exciting. I'm here and I'm here to stay. I'm most excited for the robotics journey but that's still to come. For the time being I've just deepened my love for programming, discovered a joy in game development, website creation, and just solving problems with code.
I can't wait to see where things progress after this first year, and I'm sure things will take off quite a bit once I can land a job in this field. But we'll see when that day comes.
Thank you for reading today's blog, I hope by the end of this all I can leave some hope out there that there is a light at the end of this journey, and that yes, it's so freakin worth it. See you on the other side, friend.