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Prathamesh Mali
Prathamesh Mali

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My programming journey in 2020

  I would like to share my programming experience in 2020. I've been coding consistently throughout the year, so I thought would be an interesting story.

  This was an amazing year for me productivity-wise, I had so much time to learn the things I always want to learn, I started coding/ programming in 16th December 2019 from offline classes @s learning Java, cleared all my fundamentals there while doing an MSc which is still going on.
  Honestly, in my whole 3 years of BSc I haven't learned much about programming or practically coding in general so I've decided that I should dedicate my time to learning these things. And because of lockdown, I got a plethora of time to invest in my skills.

  Because of the lockdown, the offline classes were closed and we have so much free time Because I knew Java it was easier for me to pick up new languages, So that's what I did learned python from April, then made some small projects in python. While doing that I was also doing a front end web design course from freecodecamp.org. Then I just kept learning. Learned HTML, CSS, and JS took Modern JavaScript from Beginning course from Brad traversey. Then made some projects in JS and other third-party APIs. Along with courses I was solving problems on Edabit and Hackerrank daily it helped me to build logic. And I was also making small projects and some big ones, built my portfolio. Got a ton of certification but not very useful.

  Now I'm still learning React and Nodejs, my goal is to solidify what I've learned and keep learning every day. I forgot to mention my friend @Anki was also coding with me we were doing the same courses from udemy and freecodeamp we have the end of the day call explaining to each other what we learned and solving doubts on Teamviewer. Having a coding partner helps, you can motivate each other to solve each other's bugs.

  The most important thing I learned is being consistent and believing in yourself, programming is not easy. If you're just wanted to learn for the sake of the job then you'll get bored or demotivated often times. Focus on learning and building skills having fun with it. My friends ask how do you keep yourself motivated, my answer is to keep the long term goal in the mind and do code every day even for an hour or 30 minutes. I had built the routine around the courses and projects that I took. Every day I almost learned for 4-5 hours on an average thanks to lockdown. I was also tracking my projects and course hours with clockify while learning it helped me to reflect on the time that I've spent per month, week, or day. And GitHub contributions chart is also the place to track your coding activity. I have created a repo for each programming language and frameworks that I've learned on Github and I was committing in it every day

  My advice to anyone who wants to get started in coding is only this, "code every day" focus on the long term. It's not too late, start today and be consistent. I was very privileged to be in the condition and not worry about working, if you're in the same place don't waste your time get up and start working. I hope this motivates someone to get started with their journey. Best of luck everyone for the new year and may you achieve all your goals

Some stats to back up story:

My github contributions page:
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Clockify:
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Total Hours Spent coding, learning, building stuff, problem solving:
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Connect with me:


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