What I worked on in September and the idea of Learning in Public

A little bit ago I picked up a book written by swyx (The Coding Career Handbook - it's awesome, seriously scope it out) and in one of the chapters he talks about the idea of learning in public. Basically the idea is to document everything you do and don't be afraid to be wrong as long as you're trying to be correct. People notice when others are genuinely learning and are more willing to lend a hand if you're stuck or don't understand something.

There's a lot to this idea and definitely read his post about it. It's a scary thing starting out in a new field and trying to act like you belong and know what you're doing.

But you know what? It's ok if you don't know everything, you're going to be constantly learning. I remember how difficult some things in Ruby were back in my 2nd week of bootcamp, but I got over those things because I practiced and learned. I'd probably laugh at the things that were roadblocks then and I'll laugh at the things that are roadblocks now.

I need to do better about discussing the things I'm learning and this is a start to that.

September

September started off pretty busy, I officially started my job search and doing that made me realize how much work I had to do on my whole setup. Nothing like fear of failure to motivate you to improve.

I ended up deploying 4 projects and wrote a few blogs about that process since it was a pain. As a beginner to deploying production websites I had to learn a ton of new terms and concepts. I still feel I ended up accepting defeat and using a 3rd party service for some of it, but it was worth it to me to get back to coding.

It also was a busy month for getting back into talks and lectures as me and some of my cohort mates ended up attending a React conference by Geekle and then later I attended a Vue.js workshop by Frontend Masters.

I spent a little bit of time learning Express and Node.js since my previous knowledge was comically low. I wanted to make an app that let me control my Nanoleaf lights and I made good progress on that, hopefully I can finish that up in October.

September was honestly a lot of groundwork with my resume and portfolio projects, although I had a pretty active article on how to use github as your portfolio.

I just keep reminding myself that it's a marathon, not a race. Here's to an active October!