My original post about getting started coding wound up here : https://java.libhunt.com/newsletter/186 so thank you to anyone who commented, liked and shared it. I appreciate it.
It's getting near the end of the year, so I thought I'd look back over the last 3-4 years. It's an interesting way to see where all my stops and starts have been in trying to learn programming, and (Hopefully) motivation to do much better in the coming year. Here goes!
2016
Lol. As you can see from my single solitary post, I opened an issue with repl.it. Apparently importing didn't work in Python. I have literally no idea what that means now. I was still learning about github and trying to figure everything out. I think I was learning html/css for the first time, so didn't upload anything else after that.
I also think I didn't make it past a couple months. Also, my son was born in January, and my wife's dad passed a way a couple weeks after that. We lived in Charlotte NC at the time, and her parents lived in Arkansas. We had been planning to move closer to them so our kids would have access to grandparents etc.
We did wind up moving there in June, and between job moving/job hunting, any thoughts of programming took a backseat.
2017
A little bit better. I was attempting to build my first website, and learn javascript through a "learn javascript through building games" course on Udemy. Looking back, it was a joke. The teacher didn't really teach anything, just talked his way through programming some games, I completed almost the whole course and still had no idea what I was doing.
I did make some headway learning html/css. I did manage to complete a round of 100 days of code, but it was again primarly html/css and I didn't commit much to Github.
2018
Most of 2018 was non-existent in terms of learning to code. I had landed a sales job, and spent most of the year driving almost 2 hours to work one way every day. I was managing a Target Mobile (the name for Target's cell phone sales kiosks) and was doing a very long commute. jobs were scarce where we moved to in Arkansas, and I had managed to get a job transfer while I searched for a new job closer to home. Towards the end of the year though, I'd started coding again. I rebuilt my website in bootstrap(the same site I still have) and really started trying to figure out how to learn to program.
2019
in 2019 I had picked up another bootcamp course, and worked through it for awhile. When I realized the instructor wasn't really interested in answering questions, I lost interest in the course and got a refund. Most of my commits in the early days of the year were stuff I was doing for that course. The mid year stuff was me working on my personal site, trying to get it finalized(it still isn't, I'm going to rewrite it soon). I went another big chunk of not posting when I was fired from my sales job (slow sales, tiny town, long story for another time) and wound up working at a resort building their WordPress sites, which fired up my desire to start learning how to code again.
By the time I landed the job I'm in now, I realized I had at least a good 2 hours a day of spare time, and having no more reasons/excuses not to learn, I jump in. about 62 days-ish ago I started the #100daysofcode challenge, and I've been at it ever since.
I switched languages (moved from trying to learn JS to learning Java) and I've been hard at it. I commit at least every other day, mainly from scratch challenges I am writing for the course I'm doing. It gets me in the habit of committing to Github, and gives me something to look at. I intend to make my GitHub look like this:
Because who doesn't want a backsplash like that?
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