Wow! it was an interesting 2022.
My tech journey officially started in July of 2022. Before then I dabbled in data analysis and data-related fields. It was there I found a deep interest in Backend Development. This was how it happened.
Long story short, I realized that data was the basis of everything in data analytics, so I thought, "Why don't you learn how data is generated before learning how to extract information from it". It made more sense to me to learn it this way, so I went for it.
Firstly, I noticed that in web scraping, I was practically scraping HTML off the web, so I started by learning HTML. Note that by this time, I was already fluent in Python Programming Language but didn't know I could also use it for Web Development.
The Journey - From a "good start" to " loop".
I officially started with the three musketeers - HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. I saw lots of tutorials each hour, and hours of length. I got exhausted so I decided to practice.
I grabbed my laptop, and that was it, I blanked! Seemed like all the information went on sabbatical. With nothing left in my head, I had to use my notes as support. I remember working on my first project which was "An HTML Form."
The loop there was that I continued learning these 3 things over and over. I wanted to master it. So much for mastery, I ended up wearing myself out.
The Challenges - Lost my laptop and Relocated.
While on my journey of learning, my laptop got bad but that's not the worst part. I took it to the repair shop and the technician tore it apart and tried to bring it back to life but in the end, he said, "It is gone."
I said, "How?"
He said, "Old age."
You see, my laptop getting bad is one thing. Getting bad beyond repair because of "old age" is another.
Then I relocated. I took all my notes with me so that I could read and not forget all I'd learned. Imagine reading how to code instead of learning by doing. This was me for many months. It was torture because anytime I felt like typing, I would just write it instead.
The Turn Around - Won a scholarship and got a better laptop.
In July 2022, I won a Full Stack Development Scholarship from ALX-T Udacity. I also got a new laptop in the same month. This was the turnaround for me. There I learned how to build a full-stack application using Flask. I learned how to deploy a Flask API to a Kubernetes cluster using Docker, AWS EKS(Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service), CodePipeline, and CodeBuild. It was a 3-months program that I finished in 2 months.
I ended up learning other tools like Django, Django REST Framework, Express, Bootstrap, jQuery and React. I am currently going through Kunal Kushwaha DevOps and DSA Bootcamp which are both amazing by the way.
This is 6 months down the line and I am currently on two projects which integrate both Django Rest Framework and React. I also started blogging on Hashnode.