From Problems to Projects!

Chinmay Bhat — Sat, 01 Aug 2026 06:21:04 +0000

If someone had asked me a few months ago what I was learning, my answer would've been simple ie 'DSA'.

Like most CSE students, I started with LeetCode, watched DSA playlists, and spent hours trying to understand arrays, linked lists, stacks, queues, and all the other topics that every roadmap tells you to learn.

And honestly, I still do.
I never stopped learning DSA.
But somewhere along the way, I realized something.

Whenever I looked at internship requirements, there was one thing that kept showing up besides DSA which is development.
HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Git, React, APIs, databases, projects...

It wasn't enough to solve problems anymore. Companies also wanted to know if you could build something.

That was the point where I started giving web development more of my time.
Not because DSA became less important.
Just because I felt like I was missing a piece of the puzzle.
The first few weeks of web development were interesting.

I thought HTML would be easy.Then CSS happened.I spent more time trying to center a div than I'd like to admit.When I finally reached JavaScript, things started making a little more sense. Then the DOM came along and confused me all over again.

There were days when I spent an hour debugging, only to realize I had misspelled a variable name. And somehow, I still enjoyed it.
Because every time I learned something new, I could actually use it.

Instead of ending the day with just another solved problem, I ended it with something I had built.
A timer.
A small website.
A tiny feature.

Nothing groundbreaking, but it was mine.
Seeing something work in the browser after hours of debugging is a different kind of satisfaction.

One thing I used to believe was that you had to pick one path.

Either become really good at DSA first or start building projects.

Now I don't think it's that simple.
For me, they complement each other.
DSA teaches me how to think.
Development teaches me how to apply those ideas to build something people can actually interact with.

One improves my problem-solving.
The other reminds me why I started coding in the first place.

I'm still a beginner.
I still get stuck on easy LeetCode questions.
I still spend way too much time fixing bugs that shouldn't exist.
I still Google things almost every day.
And I'm completely okay with that.
I think social media has made it easy to feel like you're always behind.
Someone is solving harder problems.
Someone is building cooler projects.
Someone is getting internships.
It's easy to compare.
But I've realized that learning isn't a race.
As long as I'm a little better than I was yesterday, that's enough.

Every problem (whether it's on LeetCode or in VS Code)is helping me become a better developer.
And I think that's progress worth celebrating.

Building My First JavaScript Timer

Chinmay Bhat — Sat, 01 Aug 2026 06:02:20 +0000

When I first started learning JavaScript, I realized that simply watching tutorials wasn't helping me build confidence. I could understand the concepts while watching, but when it came to building something on my own, I often got stuck.

So after learning the basics of DOM selection and manipulation, I decided to build a simple timer from scratch.

Before writing any code, I tried something different.I designed the UI in Figma first. It was my first time using Figma, and although the design was pretty simple, it gave me a clear picture of what I wanted to build before opening VS Code.

One thing I learned while building this project is that HTML isn't just about throwing

s everywhere. Breaking the interface into meaningful sections made the code much easier to organize. I separated the page into a title, a timer display, and a button section, which made both the HTML and CSS feel much cleaner.

The JavaScript part was where most of the learning happened.

At first, I selected the timer digits using querySelector(). It took me a while to realize that it only returns the first matching element. Since my timer display had multiple elements, I had to switch to querySelectorAll(), which gave me access to all of them.

Another interesting lesson came from event listeners. Adding a click event to the Start button was straightforward, but I ran into an unexpected bug. Every time I clicked the Start button, the timer started running faster. After some debugging, I realized that every click was creating a brand new setInterval() instead of reusing the existing one.

The fix was surprisingly simple. I stored the interval ID returned by setInterval() and made sure only one interval could run at a time. That also made implementing the Pause and Reset buttons much easier using clearInterval().

Not every problem was related to JavaScript. At one point, none of my code seemed to work because I had linked my script.js file incorrectly. The browser kept showing a 404 error, and after checking the file path, everything started working. It was a good reminder that sometimes the problem isn't in the code itself but in how the project is set up.

By the end of this project, I had a working timer, but more importantly, I gained a much better understanding of how different JavaScript concepts work together.

What I learned from this project
Designing a simple UI in Figma before coding
Structuring HTML into meaningful sections
Styling layouts using Flexbox
Using querySelector() and querySelectorAll()
Handling user interactions with addEventListener()
Using setInterval() and clearInterval()
Understanding variable scope
Debugging common beginner mistakes using the browser console

This project may look small, but it taught me far more than I expected. Instead of memorizing JavaScript syntax, I got to understand why each line of code was needed and how everything connected together.

Next, I'm planning to add more features like a countdown mode, keyboard shortcuts, and saving the timer state using localStorage.

If you're learning JavaScript too, I highly recommend building small projects like this instead of only watching tutorials. You learn a lot more when you're forced to solve real problems yourself.

JavaScript #WebDevelopment #Frontend #DOM #Figma #CSS #HTML #100DaysOfCode #CodingJourney #BuildInPublic

DEV Community: Chinmay Bhat

From Problems to Projects!

Building My First JavaScript Timer

JavaScript #WebDevelopment #Frontend #DOM #Figma #CSS #HTML #100DaysOfCode #CodingJourney #BuildInPublic