DEV Community: Chelsey McKinney

My 2nd Time Doing The #100DaysOfCode Challenge

Chelsey McKinney — Thu, 28 Nov 2019 01:50:47 +0000

On October 28th, 2019, I started the #100DaysOfCode Challenge a second time. My first time was last year from November 14th, 2018 to February 21st, 2019.

For those who don't know, the 100 Days Of Code challenge is an online competition for programmers, designers, and the like.
There are only 2 rules of the challenge:

Code for at least an hour every day for 100 days.
Share your progress online every day for 100 days. (Tweet, Blog, etc.)

You may be asking yourself, why would I do the challenge again? What's different the second time?

Honestly? A lot.

First, when I started the 100 Days Of Code challenge in November 2018, I was going through a personal event that left me considering whether or not to continue pursuing a career in tech. Participating in the challenge was a personal project I took on to regain my faith in programming.

Second, now that I have moved on from that event, starting the same challenge that I completed almost 5 months ago will be completely different. I am in a new space mentally and emotionally, so I feel better prepared.

Third,I made a note of what worked for me the first time, so I had a guide to help me prepare again.
(If interested, you can check out my tips in completing the challenge here)

Finally, I took some considerable time to plan what I wanted to create before starting the 100 days challenge again. The first time I did the challenge, I just jumped in with no concrete plan.I had some ideas, which I used, but they were not as detailed.
Since I've started working as a programmer, I have noticed how important it is to plan your projects from start to finish. Wireframes, user stories, tech stack...all of this matters in order to develop a successful project.

I feel that this time with a stronger plan of what I want to create, the challenge will be even more exciting the second time.
I learned a lot completing the challenge the first time, and I hope to learn even more going through the challenge again.

If you want to follow my 100 Days Of Code journey, I post my daily updates onTwitter.

NOTE: At the time of writing this post, I am currently on Day 30 of the 100 Days Of Code Challenge.

The Junior Dev’s Guide To Completing The 100 Days Of Code Challenge a.k.a Don’t Panic

Chelsey McKinney — Thu, 28 Nov 2019 01:49:30 +0000

Note:I started 100 Days Of Code challenge on November 14th, 2018 and completed it February 21st, 2019.

Coming off of a tech reprieve for 3 months, I saw a tweet on Twitter about a developer mentioning the 100 Days Of Code challenge. I decided to participate in the challenge to re-develop my relationship with programming.

The 100 Days Of Code challenge provided a lot of flexibility to the participants. There are only two rules:
1)Code for a minimum of an hour everyday.
2) Tweet and/or share your progress using the #100DaysOfCode Challenge.

The flexibility of the rules allowed me to fit the challenge to my schedule. As an individual who worked close to 40 hours a week this gave me an amazing amount of freedom.
Although I’m a developer now, when I made the decision to do the 100 Days Of Code challenge, I was working full-time as a site coordinator for a public school system. So, all of the coding I did was outside of work.
That being said, my approach to this challenge was not set up to create a certain number of apps in 100 days.

My main thing was coding, being enmeshed in technology. It was literally (LITERALLY) the act of turning on my computer, opening up my Terminal, and Text editor without anxiety was my main goal. I wanted to prove to myself that I can code and enjoy technology again.
After I made the decision to do the challenge. I had begun to think about what I would do. However, thinking about doing a challenge is a lot different than actually doing “doing” the challenge.
Programming is a muscle that you will always have to continue to flex and grow. I stopped programming for 3 months. At this point when I had returned to programming, I was super out of the loop because I had made moves to disassociate myself from that community due to my experience with Girl Develop It.

While I was participating in the challenge, I found that there were some key takeaways and/or tips that helped me finish 100 Days Of Code Challenge. To that end, this is the advice that I can give to you in completing a coding challenge:
Disclaimer: The tips I am about to give you are not be taken as gospel. These pieces of advice helped me, so hopefully it will help you.

1 Make your version of a plan

Think about what you really want to do in 100 days.
(either before the challenge, during the challenge, etc.)
Make a plan for what you would like to build during the challenge. For example, you can decide to only build and/or learn things about ReactJS, or another library/framework. Your plan doesn’t have to be super detailed. However, I have found it was good for me to know what I was going to do before turning on my computer everyday after work.
In my case, for daily plans,I would make a list of things that I didn’t get completed the day before, so the following day, I knew what I needed to work on. I had to write these things down, or else I could easily forget what I was going to do.

2 Hold Yourself Accountable

You will need self-motivation to work on the challenge every single day. Write reminders to yourself. Ask people to check on you because it's you, and yourself that will do this challenge. You can pair up with another developer for support, but
even if you work with another developer, you still must hold up your part of the bargain, and put in the time and work to complete the challenge on your end.

3 Try to get at least an hour done everyday.(That is one of the rules!)

My minimum daily goal was an hour, and once I met an hour, then I would get up to do some chores, and then come back to coding.
FYI, a sub-rule to the challenge is that if you miss a day, you add the hour to the following day.

4 Time is your friend.*

There are two things about time that I found important: First, the rules stipulate you have to code for an hour everyday. The rules don’t say you have to code for a straight hour everyday. You have complete control over your time. For me, I know myself. There were somedays when I could come home and have the energy to code without pause. But, other days, I needed breaks. Sometimes I would split my daily hour up into either 20 minute or 30 minute increments. I kept track by timing myself. Timing myself brings me to my second thing about time: I would recommend that you use a timer to keep track of your hour. If you have an accurate sense of time, good for you.I do not have a sense of time. But, this is a challenge, so having a stop watch/timer never hurt anyone. :)

5 Remember that you are practicing.

Be patient. Don’t beat yourself up because you can’t think of a solution right away. The premise of this challenge was to push yourself and expand on your programming skills over 100 days. You have 100 days(and more) to get things down. No one said that you had to understand something immediately.

6 You are still ‘coding’ even if you didn’t type for the full hour.(or type at all)*

Googling/Stack Overflowing/Slacking your problem, and trying different solutions still counts as coding. Coding/Typing, I have found, are often seen as the same thing.Coding and Typing go together, but they aren’t the same thing necessarily.(depending on the situation). I feel that it's not taken into account that there are bugs that come up in your code so you do have to take some time to figure those out before trying again.

7 You can take breaks.(I would recommend it)

If a bug gets you down, get up and walk around. Staring at a screen hoping for a solution is wasting time and can be draining. Again, you can split your time up if thats better; Give yourself some breathing room. But, if you are timing yourself--make sure to pause the stopwatch before taking a break so you don’t throw off your time.

8 Decide on your environment.

If you like noise while you code, find a show that you know you can binge, or a playlist that you love.(Start the music or show before starting to code).If you don’t like noise, then create a space where there is minimal chance of sound disrupting your flow. If you like large spaces, or small spaces, etc. find a place and/or environment where you can relax and focus for a set period of time.

9 Have everything you need around you before you begin coding.

This includes snacks, drinks, chargers ,etc. No matter how you decided to complete your hour every day, I would recommend having everything you need for coding around you before you start. There is nothing more irritating to me than having to get up when I’m in a good focus and get something which breaks my concentration.

10 Share your work, or the length of your journey.

Why is this important? You get attention! Tweeting, blogging, etc. about you participating in the challenge puts you on the map, or on someone’s timeline. Tweeting about my experience, gave me more exposure which was beneficial to my career as a jr. dev. I received technical interview practice, I met new developers in the Twin Cities and outside of the state, I got interviews(informational and technical), and just got overall advice about working in tech.
If you want to do it for you, and keep it small, like telling your family or friends, you can send updates to them throughout the challenge. I would recommend to share what you are doing to someone. You should be proud of what you’ve accomplished so far, no matter how far you are into the challenge. Remember that!

11 Take it Day by day.

100 days is a lot of time. Try not to think about the 100 days as a whole, but in pieces..parts...etc. I really had to work on this a lot. For example, I made check-ins in my calendar and planner when I reached the double digit days, or Day 50. I bought a large calendar and placed that on my wall. I broke my time up in different ways to make it more manageable.

Although I've shared with you the tips that worked for me, not everything while coding for 100 Days was peachy keen.
For example, I didn’t think about how using Twitter everyday for 100 Days would create a dependency on the social media site. Second, I experienced Imposter Syndrome a lot while working on things. Finally, I wish I had done the challenge with another dev for more moral support.

Despite the few downsides, I really did have fun and began to relax more when it came to programming.

The real true goal of completing this challenge was me actually completing the challenge. I wanted to push myself. I followed through the 100 days to see if I still felt that I could make a place for myself in the tech community, and if I still wanted to pursue programming as a career. 100 Days goes fast!
The good news is that while finding out I wanted to continue to program, I did a lot of amazing things.

Here is a list of things that I completed doing the #100DaysOfCode Challenge:

Starting a Udemy course
Completed an entire site of Python3 practice problems
Updated my portfolio
Participated in a hackathon
Learned the basics of Big O Notation
Practiced for tech interviews
Applied for close to a 100 jobs and/or apprenticeships
Attended a JS conference in Hawaii
Finally(finally!) got to the 3rd book in the You Don't Know JS (YDKJS) series
Received my first full-time job offer as a programmer
Improved my skills in searching for a solution online
And, most importantly,I completed the challenge

I would personally recommend that any dev participate in a coding challenge/competition. It's a great opportunity for your professional growth.
If any dev is thinking about participating in the #100DaysOfCode Challenge, hit me up on Twitter! I love to see devs joining the challenge.

Note:This post was originally given as a talk at Minneapolis Junior Devs in June 2019.

6 Life Lessons In Tech

Chelsey McKinney — Thu, 28 Nov 2019 01:08:43 +0000

Please Note:
This post that you are about to read is very personal to me. Part of my healing came from taking the time to really examine the situations and my feelings, and pulling the broader lessons or insight from my experiences. Everyone has their own journey may end up in a different circumstance. For this reason, I do not plan to use real names or dig into the nitty-gritty details of my life. I hope what I have to say will make you think about being accessible, welcoming and respectful to all kinds of developers – and, if that happens, then that is awesome.

This post is about my personal experiences that led me to rediscover my faith in programming. Also, the few life lessons I have gained from starting over. I started to teach myself programming online about 3 years. I was at this point in my tech journey where I was looking for as much support as I could get.

I had started an online Front End Web Development coding bootcamp but there wasn’t enough structure, so I found other opportunities like a part-time in person coding bootcamp, CodeAcademy, Khan Academy and an organization called Girl Develop It. GDI is a national organization that teaches adult women, 18 years and older, computer programming.

GDI had a chapter here in the Twin Cities called GDI Minneapolis and overtime I became super involved. In December 2017, GDI Mpls asked for members who are interested in becoming chapter leaders. Chapter leaders are co-organizers of the group wearing many hats such as –coordinator, teacher, etc. Three of us, two white women and me, signed up to be the next group of CL’s. I had only been in my role as a CL for several months when conflicts transpired.

The two chapter leaders discussed my work for GDI as if it were very different from theirs--in speed, in quality, in cost effectiveness. They discussed me as if I were not linked into the same system, or operating according to the national group protocols. My colleagues, told me (and only me) I was disrespectful, less productive, and---since I was not a part of the initial conversation, I was not allowed to respond. This painful argument took place online, and eventually led me to leave GDI Mpls.

After GDI's exclusionary behavior was made public, people in the community rallied behind me and sought to address the harm they did. However, that wouldn't stop the reliving of trauma to come. I reviewed this situations for weeks, reliving the sequence of events, hovering over the negative comments, and freaking out about my online good intentions and hard work being destroyed for no reason.

Several months later, in December 2018, there was an episode of the podcast, #causeascene, hosted by another Black female in tech, Kim Crayton. In this episode, a former HQ employee at GDI, talked to Kim about the multiple micro aggressions and overall exclusionary behavior exhibited by the staff members in the HQ office based in Philly. Through this podcast, it was becoming clearer how harmful tech spaces can be for People of Color.

I found out about #causeascene from Twitter, because the public response to the growing GDI issues was so overwhelming. It had been months since I had left GDI Mpls when this podcast episode was released. Every single month since my departure, I had heard of new information about GDI’s questionable practices. Several articles have been written about GDI with current and past chapter leaders coming forward to write letters to the board. Several chapters have ceased activities since then.

[NOTE:More information including the current status of GDI chapters can be found here:(http://an-open-letter-to-gdi-board.com/timeline/ )]

The day I listened to the #causeascene podcast episode, I couldn’t get through the entire episode because I was laughing and crying. After I laughed and cried, I returned to a feeling I had pushed aside: anger. I was really angry, so why hadn’t I let myself be angry? This whirlwind of emotions led me to my first life lesson:

1 Be emotional.

Being in denial was not helping my healing process at all. Honestly, I would say that I hadn’t even begun to heal until I cried that day. I was withholding my emotions because I did not want to think about the hurt that I felt from GDI.

It should be noted that although I was comfortable crying, laughing, and venting, I was not comfortable doing other things, namely anything related to technology. The day of the argument with my two chapter co-leaders, the effect was immediate: I stopped coding. A lot of hurtful things were said, and for my sanity, I had to take a break.

I took a tech hiatus (from mid-August to mid-November) of 2018. When I stopped programming, I seriously thought that I wouldn’t program ever again. The idea of thinking about functions gave me anxiety. It was the first time I was not doing anything tech-related in close to 2 years

Taking a break from programming meant that I also took a break from the tech community. I stopped going to meetups, I unfollowed all the tech groups and essentially did non-tech things. With tech no longer being my entire life, I had all this free time to get other things I had been meaning.

For instance, I bought a PS2 and began to play Kingdom Hearts 2. I started to work out three times a week and began to reading fiction again after only reading tech books for the last several months. I hung out with friends, I binge-watched all the Netflix TV shows on ‘My List.,’ and most importantly I listened to a crap ton of Whitney Houston.

Being in the midst of this tech reprieve,I discovered my second life lesson:

2 Taking a break is awesome. I highly recommended.

I got my time back which meant I made my time for me. I could hang out with friends whenever or actually cook during the week. When I had made this transition into tech, I stopped doing the things I truly loved and there was really no reason for me to have stopped in the first place. I have found that in order for your life to have some sort of balance (because life isn’t always so put together), you must focus on what makes you happy. Working all the time (at work and outside of work) wears you down, and generally does not make you fun person.

A few months into my tech reprieve, I was on Twitter and I saw a tweet about a developer mentioning the “100 Days of Code” challenge and decide to accept. I had a general idea of what I was going to accomplish during the 100 days and it did not require a detailed plan. My main goal was to turn on my computer, open up my terminal and text editor without anxiety. Making the decision to start the challenge, gave me my third life lesson:

3 You have to start.

You have to start somewhere...anywhere. It was up to me to find the motivation. You had to mentally show up before you could begin any part of this competition. This challenge was exactly that: a challenge. It was powerful for me to even view programming in a positive light once again.

So I had decided to begin this challenge but my concerns due to my past experiences made me apprehensive. The first week was difficult because I was finding my footing. After some days had passed, I got back into the routine of coding. Learning to program and maintain those skills up is definitely a muscle you will always have to flex.

When it came to this challenge, I return to the basics of programming. I provided myself a palette cleanser of sorts. For example, I made a fan site without using Bootstrap just to see if I could do it. I started to learn another programming language and that brought out my learning and/or studying methods from when I first learned JS.

What was really interesting to me was how much “unlearning” I had to do before I learned new things. By that I mean, even though I received a lot of education from Girl Develop It, I realized that Girl Develop It didn’t make me a developer. I made myself a developer. Before GDI, I found the motivation to start exploring online and using tutorials. I wanted more support so I found an in-person option which was Girl Develop It, and later on coding bootcamps.

Coming to this realization led me to my fourth life lesson:

4 Make your own space.

This can be mental, emotional, physical or all three. There was a time when I didn’t create my own space because I was so busy making space for others. For mental space, I made sure to give myself daily positive reinforcement. I was back in the saddle and I didn’t want to fall off (figuratively speak). I paced myself and took things slow, which made completing the daily tasks of the coding challenge more manageable. For emotional space, I would give myself time to deal with that emotion. If I was frustrated about something, I allowed myself the space to do so. If I was really struggling with a bug, then I would take some time to feel sad about it, and then move on to trying to find a solution. For my physical space, I created a haven. In my apartment, I rearranged my room so I could wake up facing the natural light and bought noise cancelling headphones. I decorated my desk with Funko Pop characters, stickers and rubber ducks. I put influential women on my walls, and got a calendar to mark the days of the challenge. Anyway I could make my space my own, I did.

At this point, I had cried, laughed, took a break, started something new, and made my own space. Around the time I was in the middle of this challenge, I was feeling extremely happy. There wasn’t one specific thing or event that made me feel this way. I think it was a combination of things: coding again, hanging out with fellow techies, building things, etc. Most importantly, I started to feel that I could program again. This good feeling inside of me kept growing and one day I thought to myself, I matter. I’m important. I deserve to be here.

This affirmation is my fifth life lesson:

5 You matter. You are important. You deserve to be here.

Remember that the space you occupy has meaning. Do not let an individual or a group convince that you are not important, or otherwise.

Despite my positive affirmations, my healing did not speed up like I wanted it to. I wanted to get to a point where I was able to think about my time in tech groups and not feel a flash of anger followed by a wave of sadness. I definitely thought that starting and completing the challenge would cure me from all the anger and hurt that I had obtained throughout all of this nonsense but, it didn’t.

Thinking that there was a 5 min (or 100 days of coding) cure was not helpful for my healing process because it just put a band-aid over my grief. In order for me to get “cured,” I had to take the necessary steps that would start the healing process. (In this case it would be doing the challenge, to see about my relationship with technology).

My expectation of a magical cure is where I found my final life lesson:

6 Healing is a lengthy process.

It’s new, normal and uncomfortable at the same time. I was healing before the challenge, every single day of the challenge and after the challenge. Sharing my experience is a part of my healing, and the coding I have continued to do daily since completing the challenge also plays a part in my healing.

Undoubtedly, starting over in programming gave me a new chapter in my life. I’m a programmer, and programmers often have to try multiple things in order to find a solution. This was another stepping stone in my journey, and I’m excited to see what happens next. That being said, I would like to thank all the people who were really supportive during this chapter. All of the conversations I’ve had...big or small, gave me the inspiration to tell my story. Also, thank you to the following women of color who were extremely brave in sharing their stories online about their experiences in the tech community. These women are the catalysts, the rule breakers, who put themselves on the line personally and professionally. Without any of them, I would have never had the courage to tell my side of the story. So thank you.

*This post was originally given as a talk at Minnebar in April 2019. The presentation was entitled, "100 Days, Racism, and Starting Over: How I regained my faith in programming."