Overthinking What to Learn as a Beginner Developer :(

Irfan Khan — Tue, 12 May 2026 18:52:07 +0000

After 9 months of React frontend, I finally started backend.

JS backend felt obvious at first.
Then I overthought everything for a month.

Everywhere online:

“MERN is oversaturated”

“Python is better”

“Go is the future”…

So I switched to Python backend. Big mistake.

Not because Python is bad. I actually liked some of it. But as a backend beginner, changing ecosystems just confused me and slowed me down.

I spent more time picking the “perfect” stack than building things.

Switched back to JS backend. Felt natural again because of React.

Lesson: constantly changing stacks hurts more than picking the “wrong” one when u have less time.

Still want to learn Python someday. But for now, happy to finally start my backend journey.

After grinding frontend for 9 months :)
Can’t be more happy.

## 🚀 My First Hacktoberfest Experience

Irfan Khan — Thu, 30 Oct 2025 19:02:28 +0000

This was my first ever Hacktoberfest, and honestly, it was such a fun, chaotic, and rewarding experience 😄.
I made 12 pull requests, and super happy to say that all of them got merged, which still feels unreal to me 🥹.

Most of my work was frontend-focused — fixing layouts, tweaking components, improving responsiveness, and polishing small UI bits here and there. It felt really good applying my frontend skills to actual open-source projects instead of just side experiments or tutorials.

I tried to avoid touching README files, you know, with the little controversy around contributions from India 😅, but still wanted every PR to have real value and impact.

Throughout this month, I discovered some amazing projects, interacted with super chill maintainers, learned how real-world collaboration works, and got more comfortable with Git, PR reviews, and version control in general.

Hacktoberfest honestly boosted my confidence as a developer — every time I saw that green “merged” badge, it felt like a mini win 🧩.
I enjoyed every single part of it, from hunting issues to seeing my code live in production.

Can’t wait to join again next year — hopefully as a maintainer this time 👀.
Cheers to clean commits, meaningful contributions, and endless learning 🚀❤️.

DEV Community: Irfan Khan

Overthinking What to Learn as a Beginner Developer :(

## 🚀 My First Hacktoberfest Experience