#100DaysOfCode - First Quarter Finished

January 1. A time for fresh starts, new adventures and jumping into the foray of resolutions that the New Year draws out of us all. As the beginning of 2019 loomed, I knew I wanted to try something different with this year. I had spent most of 2018 watching the dev community from the sidelines hesitant to engage in #CodeNewbie, #DevDiscuss or the various other hashtags that abounded. I'm going to peg that on my introvertedness with a dash of impostor syndrome thrown in. So to break this status quo, convinced myself that it was time I stepped up my social game through participation in #100DaysOfCode on Twitter.

If you’re not familiar with this concept, the rules are pretty straight-forward - code for one hour for one hundred days and tweet what progress was made during that day. This practice of participating in some sort of streak wasn’t entirely new to me. I had attempted a few run streaks but generally bailed on these more due to my body revolting against the endless miles rather than a lack of discipline. My biggest concern to completing this task is that life happens - some days, finding an hour to sit down and work on something productively is just not viable. I knew that at some point, I would need to come to terms with this reality, but figured I would cross that bridge when I got there.

Now with January coming to an end, I have hit 25 days - woohoo! It has been an enlightening experience so far. To help sum it up, here are a few thoughts after wrapping up the first quarter of this project.

First, I now have a code log...kind of! Looking back through my tweets, I get a little glimpse into the past as to what I spent all my time working on. In not being the journaling type, short messages for each day are doable for me. It didn’t have to be overly verbose or intensely in-depth. KISS is sometimes the most sensible way to go.

Second, I had to finish each day by asking myself, “Self, what did you accomplish today?” Some days, this answer was really easy to determine. For others, it became more a matter of accepting that I had spent an entire evening just searching for error message solutions. Both of these types of days are the norm for developers.

Third, I realized the beauty of CodePen and Free Code Camp. For the days when I had to stay at school late, being able to jump on an editor for a while and work through the JavaScript review was priceless. While not the ideal setup, it worked for what I needed it to.

But with all these glorious benefits of #100DaysOfCode, there is an area or two that I am still struggling. One such way is when it comes to remembering to tweet before heading to bed. By the time I’m wrapping up my code for the night, it’s already much later that I intended to stop. All I can think about at that point is getting what shuteye I can. Most of my tweets go out the next day as a result - whoops!

The other truth is that, in the very near future, I’ll be jumping into marathon training again (darn injuries!). In my family being my first priority, the limited time I’ll need to split between running miles and running code will become much more challenging. While not ideal, piecemealing the time I need throughout the day may be my best option.

Overall, I’ve been pretty happy about this one hundred day adventure. I’m really looking forward to making new connections with other devs on the same journey. I’ll be sure to give another update once I hit the halfway mark - that’s only a few weeks away!

Happy coding!