DEV Community: Sumukhesh

My Scary First Day as a Developer.

Sumukhesh — Sat, 11 Jul 2020 18:56:52 +0000

It all started with a mail that read, "your onboarding process starts tomorrow. You will have an orientation and an introduction to the team." Reading this mail gave me an adrenaline boost. Of course, I knew before this mail that I was hired, but I was very eager to start, ready to dive into the latest technologies, building stuff, and creating the next big things. This might sound like a cliche`, but I couldn't sleep that night. I was constantly imagining and recreating scenarios in my mind. It felt awesome and I thought, this is how success feels like.

The next morning, I was glued to my phone constantly waiting for the meeting link. Now mind you, I am also a daydreamer, so I was reliving yesterday's "successes". Finally, I got a notification. It was the meeting link and I froze like a deer in front of headlights. I was not sure of what was bound to happen after I click the link. I impulsively clicked the link anyway.

The meeting was over. It was a normal introductory session and it surely didn't match any of the scenarios I imagined last night. But the important thing about the session was that I was introduced to the technology stack they operated on. Finally, in the end, I was given a list of concepts to learn in Angular. Later that day I spent most of the time learning angular and was excited to implement it in real-world projects. At the end of the day, I got a phone call from our founder...

DISCLAIMER: What happened next was unique for me and might not be the same for everyone on their first day at work. Remember, I was working in a start-up, so I knew the challenges before and was ready to face them. This is by no means to scare any of you.

On the phone call, our founder had explained to me the immediate project that required attention. We were supposed to deliver an initial prototype of a working project to the client in a single day. It was an 'all hands at the deck ' moment where we had an internal hackathon to produce a stable working deliverable by the end.

The next day, our hackathon started at 8:00 AM. I was immediately pushed into a group. Later we discussed how we were going to approach the problem and solve it accurately. As it was my first day at work, I had no idea what they were talking about. That's when panic started to kick in. After the meeting, roles were assigned and I got my first task.
Immediately, I was given access to the codebase and was simply asked to add a widget to an HTML Page.

With a lot of anxiety and a dash of optimism, I decided to view the codebase and decide an approach to solve the task. The moment I opened the codebase, I was dumbfounded with the amount of code and logic in front of me(it was 10 times the amount of code I wrote for my projects). At this moment the panic and anxiousness started to turn into fear.
Fear of not completing the task, fear of inability, fear of FAILURE.

In this state of distress, I was not able to connect the dots. I wasn't thinking clearly. My brain was being shoved with tons and tons of lines of code which I didn't know. This resulted in me forgetting the basics of HTML.
As I go further into the codebase, the fear grew exponentially to a point where I forced myself to shut the system. After this, I went for a walk to calm myself. During this walk, I felt miserable as I was not able to complete even a small task.

After a while, I regained some clarity and went back to the system. I decided to search for some templates online. Although I thought, I'd never opt to do this in my professional career, I decided to do it anyway. This was not how I expected my first day to be. But I was not ready to give up easily.
later that day, I spent almost 7-8 hours on google, stack overflow, W3 Schools, and many more code websites. I also took a lot of help from my teammates. Finally, after going through tons of API documentation, blogs, and comments, I eventually managed to show the expected output to the team.

What started as an exciting day at 8:00 in the morning ended at midnight with a lot of exhaustion(Yeah you read it right, I worked up to 16 hours on my first day and I regret nothing about it.).

My takeaway from all this is that, it's okay to be overwhelmed with all the technical things you see on your first day. It's okay to forget the things you know. It's okay, not understanding anything on your first meet. It's okay to google even small concepts if you are not sure. It's okay to ask for help.
No one expects you to be a perfect developer right on your first day. The things that baffle you on your first day will become easier to grasp after a few weeks. Give yourself some time, and you'll perform better when you are in the right state of mind.
Now I completed 10 days at the company, and am able to process the information thrown at me, navigate my way through the treacherous codebase, and complete at least one small task per day. I am by no means comfortable doing what I am, but now I dare to face new challenges. I am glad of my first day at work and I believe it played a part in making me a better developer.

Right then, this was my scary first day as a developer. Though it is not a typical first day for a beginner, it surely is one to remember.
Share your first day experiences in the comments down below.

How I got a full-stack internship as a beginner.

Sumukhesh — Tue, 30 Jun 2020 08:42:32 +0000

I still remember the day I got my IELTS and GRE test scores. I got a decent 7.5 in IELTS and 301 in GRE. With these, I was ready to apply to the universities in the US, for masters in CS. Everything was going well, but then IT(The pandemic) happened. As if someone has jinxed it, I had to cancel my plans to pursue a master's degree. Putting me back to square one.

(little background: I am a final year grad student of CS from India and I love dogs.)

I was so disappointed, and the lockdown was not helping my cause. For a couple of weeks, I binge-watched shows on Netflix, to soothe my pain. Slowly I started to accept the reality and immediately started to look for other options. I contacted many friends and was asking for their opinions and suggestions. A friend of mine told me to checkout MERN Bootcamp by Hitesh Choudhary, which was at an incredibly low price of 199 rupees($ 2.60). I quickly bought the course before the sale ended, without any thought about how am I going to do it.
To be honest, back then, web development was never something that amused me. I was so naive to think it was all easy when compared to Machine Learning and Data Science. I was comparing apples and oranges.

The following will give you a measure of how stupid I was. After the purchase of the course, I started to research about the MERN stack(I didn't even know the abbreviation of MERN), what are the possible job opportunities. I was putting the cart in front of the horses.

After a little digging, I found that it was a decent enough choice for the start of my web development journey. At that time, I knew only a little bit of HTML, CSS, and a pinch of JavaScript. I didn't know any frameworks and couldn't even differentiate between server and backend.

With all the naivete and false expectations, I started the course expecting to finish it in 2-3 weeks. I was slowly pacing through the course, thanks to the trainer(who was dumbing things down). Before I know, I became a code monkey. How would I've even realized this? as it felt so cool to have the power in my hands.
Around week 2 everything was going smoothly until I encountered an error and the trainer didn't. I was scared.

I collected myself and started the debugging process. I was so clueless and afraid to even to go through the code base as haven't understood anything clearly. I was only following the trainer.
But then, I made up my mind to understand everything that I've done up to that point and figure out what was causing the error, even if it is going to take a lot of time.
After 2 days of debugging, I finally solved the error. In that moment of euphoria, I realized that I want to do this for my life.

This scenario has taught me an important lesson in development. That is bugs are part of software development and handling, solving bugs will make you a better programmer. I am thankful that I faced that error. After this, I approached the entire course differently, documenting all the stuff I learn and all the errors I faced. Does this mean I happily lived after? no. I also faced many errors later in the course, but this time I dared to debug them and also the ability to find the root of the bug.
My point is don't be scared by the bugs, They are the part of the learning process.

Later on, after a decent understanding of the course, I started applying for internships on Internshala. Since I had some experience with the platform, I know how to get noticed by recruiters. I applied to 40-50 companies, out of which 15 responded. Before I know, I was giving 2 interviews per day and solving many code assignments. This is where I was implementing what I have learned. Amidst this, fortunately after clearing 3 rounds of an interview, a company hired me.

WAIT. That's not it. My journey would be incomplete if I didn't mention the dev community. All of the above was possible only because I was motivated by the work and the people in the industry.
I just didn't pick up some random course and started learning. I picked up a lifestyle. A lifestyle of a developer.
I also consumed a lot of content from the creators in the community. From day 1 I felt like I belonged here. This also helped me deal with my imposter syndrome.
It only makes sense for me to contribute back to the community.

Right then, This was my journey into web development. Please share your journey and highlights in the comments.