DEV Community: Akshita

5 Weeks of Learning: Week5

Akshita — Sun, 09 Nov 2025 17:29:48 +0000

Hey everyone!
First off, I’d like to start with an apology for the heavy delay in this final post. I kept thinking that I would post my Week 5 update after completing one specific thing I had in my mind, but it’s just not getting done.

Rather than delay any further, I decided it’s time to just bind this challenge up!

What I Did in the Final Stretch

This last period was about getting back into my regular flow after the exam break.

On the DSA Front:

Tackled Binary Search on Answers.
Spent time revising past topics to keep them fresh.
Worked through a few recursion-focused questions.
Participated in the weekly contests.
Tried to do the POTD on days when the problem was from a topic I had already studied.

On the Development Front:

I finally... finally... continued with backend development after what feels like eternities! It felt great to dive back into my projects.

That's a Wrap!

And with that, this 5-week challenge comes to an end. It was a journey of balancing goals with the reality of exams, events, and life in general.

A huge thanks to everyone for sticking around and reading my updates. I hope to see you all again with another similar challenge soon.

Till then, keep grinding and stay safe.

Signing off 🌸
Akshita

5 Weeks of Learning: Week4

Akshita — Mon, 27 Oct 2025 10:36:00 +0000

Hey everyone, Akshita here.

As I mentioned in my last post, I'm back with my Week 4 update now that my mid-semester exams and the festival rush are finally over!

Staying Consistent Through the Chaos

The past couple of weeks were almost entirely dedicated to academics, but I'm really happy to report one small win: I managed to stay consistent with my coding habit. Even on the busiest exam days, I made sure to solve at least one LeetCode problem every single day to keep the streak going.

Back on the DSA Track

With exams out of the way, I was able to properly dive back into my DSA goals this week. I'm happy to say I've successfully covered and solved problems for:

Binary Search on 1D Arrays
Monotonic Stack & Queue problems

It feels great to be back on track and have the mental energy to focus on development and problem-solving again.

Just one week left in this 5-week challenge! I'm looking forward to finishing strong.

Signing off 🌸
Akshita

5 Weeks of Learning: Week 3

Akshita — Mon, 06 Oct 2025 03:04:49 +0000

Hey everyone,

Just wanted to post a quick update for Week 3 of my learning challenge. This past week was pretty quiet and focused heavily on preparing for my mid-semester exams.

What I’ve Been Up To
It wasn't a week for big projects, but more about keeping up with daily habits.
My main activities were:

Spending most of my time studying for my upcoming mid-sems.
Keeping my lc streak alive by solving minimum one question daily
(October so far:-)
Participating in the weekly LeetCode contest on Sunday to test my skills.

A Quick Note on Week 4
Since my exams are officially starting this week, my focus will be entirely on academics. I won't be working on my development or DSA skills, so it doesn't make sense to post an update for a week that's off-challenge.

Because of that, I've decided to skip next week's post. The Week 4 update will go live on Saturday, October 25th.

Hope to see you all then with a productive update! For now, wish me luck on my exams.

Signing off 🌸
Akshita

5 Weeks of Learning: Week 2

Akshita — Mon, 29 Sep 2025 10:15:05 +0000

Hey everyone, Akshita here with my update for Week 2 of the learning challenge!

As I predicted last week, it was a hectic one, but it came with a huge win. Here’s a quick review of how things went.

Hackathon Progress! 🏆

My main focus this week was my ongoing hackathon project, and I'm so excited to announce that my team has cleared the first round! Most of my energy went into getting our project ready for submission, and it paid off.

We're now working on making improvements for the second round. I'll share more details about the project itself once we (hopefully!) clear this next stage as well. 🤞

DSA and Mid-Sem Prep

With the hackathon taking center stage, this week was a bit lighter on the DSA front. I managed to complete the leftover questions from my Linked List problem set, but didn't get to start Binary Search as planned. This was mainly due to a busy schedule with college events.

I also officially started studying for my mid-semester exams, which are just around the corner.

Goals for Week 3: The October Focus

October is starting tomorrow, and with my mid-sems only a week away, my major focus will be shifting to academics and consistent DSA practice.

My plan for this upcoming week is to balance my hackathon improvements with dedicated study sessions. I hope this week will be more productive than ever!

Thanks for reading and for all the support.

Signing off 🌸
Akshita

5 Weeks of Learning: Week 1

Akshita — Mon, 22 Sep 2025 12:54:50 +0000

Week 1 of my learning challenge is in the books, and it was a fantastic deep dive into backend fundamentals and core data structures.

📝 Week 1 Review:

My primary focus was on practical application in development, supported by consistent DSA practice.

Development:

Gained a solid, hands-on understanding of the Model-View-Controller (MVC) architectural pattern.
Applied these concepts by building a full-featured URL Shortener project from scratch
Integrated key backend features, including Server-Side Rendering (SSR) and user authentication.
Navigated and resolved various bugs, which was a great real-world lesson in debugging.

Data Structures & Algorithms (DSA):
Made significant progress on my goal, tackling the vast majority of my Linked List problem set. The few remaining questions will be completed this week.

🎯 Goals for Week 2:

This week already looks hectic, but the plan is to manage my time effectively across projects and DSA. I'll also begin preparing for my mid-semester exams.
Primary Goal: Finalize and submit my ongoing hackathon project.
Backend: Deepen my knowledge of security by focusing on Authorization concepts.
DSA: Complete the remaining Linked List problems and begin studying Binary Search on 1D arrays.
The challenge is ramping up, especially with mid-sems starting in October. Balancing development with academics will be key. Looking forward to another productive week!

Signing off 🌸
Akshita

5-Week Learning Challenge: Time to Level Up!

Akshita — Sun, 14 Sep 2025 10:22:51 +0000

Hey everyone! 👋

Let's start with a quick introduction - I'm Akshita, a second-year Computer Science student.

I'm kicking off a 5-week public learning challenge, and I wanted to share my goals here to keep myself accountable. I've been putting it off for a while, and I believe this challenge is the perfect way to build back momentum.

My Focus: Backend Dev + DSA

For this journey, I'll be focusing on two key areas:

Backend Development: I'll be diving deeper into the world of Node.js to strengthen my server-side skills.
Data Structures & Algorithms (DSA): I stopped practicing DSA for a bit and fell off the wagon. It's time to get back on track and rebuild that foundation.

The Goal for Week 1
To hit the ground running, here's my plan for this week:

Node.js: Learn and implement authentication, focusing on JWT (JSON Web Tokens) and cookies.
DSA: Tackle and complete the entire Linked List topic.

My Mindset for the Challenge
To be honest, I'm not setting expectations of building something huge or becoming an expert in five weeks. My main goal is to stay consistent, embrace the process, and simply enjoy learning again. Let's see where I am at the end of this journey!

Let's Connect!
If you’re also learning, let’s keep each other accountable.
Share your progress, your struggles, and let’s celebrate every small achievement together.

Signing off 🌸
Akshita

Nodejs

Akshita — Sun, 31 Aug 2025 17:14:00 +0000

30 Days Of Code- Day 30

Akshita — Sun, 31 Aug 2025 16:42:45 +0000

Hey there 👋 hope you're doing well

And just like that... we've made it! This is Day 30 of my #30DaysOfCode journey, and honestly, I'm feeling a mix of relief and accomplishment. It's been a ride filled with code, chaos, and some serious self-discovery.

Here's a quick rundown of what I've been up to as I wrapped up the challenge:

Tech Issues Were Real: Today has been a complete mess. My new SIM card's internet just doesn't want to work properly. I've restarted my phone and checked everything, but no luck. It's so frustrating when you just want to code, and technology fights you every step of the way!
Backend Fundamentals: Despite the chaos, I managed to get a lot done. I finally studied the main HTTP methods: GET, POST, PUT, PATCH, and DELETE. Understanding that each method has a specific job was a huge lightbulb moment for me.
Discovering Express.js: I started learning Express.js, and now I get why everyone uses it. Building a server with just Node.js feels a bit low-level. Express.js is a fantastic framework that sits on top, making it much easier to manage routes and handle requests. It's a total game-changer.
My "A-Ha!" Moments: This challenge was full of them. Figuring out how to connect the frontend and backend, understanding Node.js's non-blocking architecture, and now seeing how Express.js simplifies everything—each of these moments felt like a big win.

Towards the end, I have to admit, I got a bit lazy and started procrastinating on posting. I'm really sorry for the gaps, and I'm super grateful to my three followers—and everyone else who was reading—for sticking with me.

This isn't the end of the road, though. This 30-day challenge was just the warmup. To keep the momentum going and dive even deeper into my newfound love for backend, I'll keep posting about my learnings.

Signing off 🌸
Akshita

30 Days of Code - Day 29:

Akshita — Sat, 30 Aug 2025 16:59:53 +0000

Hey there 👋 hope you're doing well

Okay, so I have a confession to make. I'm really sorry for not posting when there were only two days left. I got into a cycle of procrastinating so much, and before I knew it, a few days had passed. I should have been more disciplined about posting, and I’m kicking myself for it.

But the good news is, I'm back! And I promise that tomorrow, without any gaps, I will be posting the Day 30 article to wrap this all up.

Thank you so much for sticking around, whether you're one of my three followers or just someone who stumbled upon my posts. I'm genuinely grateful to each and every one of you, and your support, even if you don't follow me, means a lot.

So, what have I been up to these past few days? I've been focusing even more on learning backend development. I've been studying a bunch of things in Node.js:

I learned about modules, which are basically just a way to break up your code into smaller, reusable pieces.
I got into file handling, so you can read and write files on the server.
I also spent time building my first HTTP server, which was a huge milestone.
But out of all these things, the most interesting part for me was understanding the architecture of Node.js. It's crazy how it works with the event loop and single thread to handle so many things at once. It's so different from what I expected, and it's making me appreciate the power of Node.js even more.

So yeah, that's what's been going on. I'm back on track and ready to finish this challenge strong!

Signing off 🌸
Akshita

30 Days of Code - Day 28

Akshita — Sun, 24 Aug 2025 17:13:13 +0000

Hey there 👋 hope you're doing well

Alright, so today is Day 28 of my #30DaysOfCode grind on DEV Community. So I decided to do a mini digital detox. I basically deactivated all my social media accounts, except for LinkedIn, of course. The goal is to just focus, you know? No more endless scrolling and getting distracted.

And it's already helping! Today I really got into backend development, specifically playing around with Node.js. I'm trying to get a handle on how the frontend and backend talk to each other.

It's like, the frontend is the cool-looking part you see, and the backend is all the stuff that happens behind the scenes. They communicate using something called an API, which is basically a set of rules for how they exchange information. Like, the frontend asks for something, and the backend gives it back. Pretty neat.

And speaking of that, I finally got to know about Axios! It's this amazing library for making those API calls. Everyone keeps saying how great it is, and I think I'm starting to see why. It just makes things so much easier and cleaner to handle. I heard it's better than the built-in fetch() because it handles errors more smoothly and automatically converts JSON data, so you don't have to do it manually.

I learned some cool stuff about Node.js today, too:

It's not a framework: I used to think it was, but nope! It's actually a "runtime environment" which just means it lets you run JavaScript on a server.
It's got Google's V8 engine: The same engine that makes Chrome super fast is what's running Node.js. That's why it's so quick.
Single-threaded but non-blocking: This one's a little mind-bending. It uses a single thread, but it's super smart about it. It doesn't wait for one task to finish before it starts another. It can handle a bunch of stuff at once without getting stuck, which is why it's great for things like real-time apps and streaming.

I know it's probably too early to say for sure, but I'm getting the feeling that I'm going to love backend more than frontend. There's something about the logic and building the engine of an application that just clicks for me. It's been a good day of focused learning, and I'm ready to tackle the final stretch of this challenge!

Signing off 🌸
Akshita

30 Days of Code- Day 27

Akshita — Sat, 23 Aug 2025 17:25:17 +0000

Hey there 👋 hope you're doing well

Today marks Day 27 of my #30DaysOfCode journey on DEV Community, and it's been a rollercoaster! Alongside my continued exploration of backend development, a recent hackathon threw some exhilarating chaos into the mix.

My team and I participated in this hackathon with absolutely no expectations for the first round, which was a PPT presentation. To our surprise, we made it to the second round! Yesterday was entirely consumed by this online second round, and let me tell you, it was pure, unadulterated chaos! 🤯 But amidst the frantic coding and problem-solving, there was an undeniable thrill.

Seriously guys, you should definitely participate in hackathons! That thrill you get from working under pressure and pushing your limits is just so much fun. It's an experience unlike any other, even if it feels completely chaotic at the moment.

I've gotta admit, a bit of laziness has crept in over the last few days. 😴 The thought of diving back into DSA coding and all that feels a little… distant right now. But okay, gotta get back on track! Today, I revised Prefix, Infix, and Postfix conversion problems, and even tackled Next Greater Element and Next Smaller Element challenges. Small steps, right?

Signing off 🌸
Akshita

30 Days of Code- Day 25 & 26

Akshita — Wed, 20 Aug 2025 03:36:52 +0000

Hey there 👋 hope you're doing well

I honestly wonder how people manage college with self-studies after such long days. For the past two days, I was so sleepy that I couldn’t even write my log. I kept telling myself, “I’ll study today and post tomorrow morning.”

So here I am now—typing this while sitting in the Delhi Metro 🚇.

Over the last two days, I managed to:

✅ Check if a Linked List is a palindrome

✅ Revise reversing a Linked List

✅ Learn how to make use case diagrams

✅ Do infix–postfix–prefix conversions using a stack

“this is your sign to keep doing something”

Signing off 🌸
Akshita