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Fiyinfoluwa Ojo
Fiyinfoluwa Ojo

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Day 30: 30 Days of Backend Development - What I Built, What I Learned

30 Days. 30 Challenges. 1 Developer.

Today marks the end of the GDGoC Bowen 30-Day
Backend Challenge. Here's everything I built.

What I Built — Day by Day

Foundation (Days 1-5)

  • Day 1 → HTTP & Hello World with FastAPI
  • Day 2 → RESTful routes
  • Day 3 → Git workflow and branching
  • Day 4 → Dynamic path parameters
  • Day 5 → Query params & Pydantic validation

Data & APIs (Days 6-14)

  • Day 6 → SQLAlchemy data models
  • Day 7 → GET all items endpoint
  • Day 8 → Serializers & DTOs
  • Day 9 → POST create endpoint
  • Day 10 → Production-ready routes
  • Day 11 → DELETE endpoint
  • Day 12 → Global error handling
  • Day 13 → Pagination & filtering
  • Day 14 → Swagger API documentation

Auth & Security (Days 15-18)

  • Day 15 → Bcrypt password hashing
  • Day 16 → JWT authentication
  • Day 17 → Permissions & ownership
  • Day 18 → Environment variables & secrets

DevOps & Deployment (Days 19-20)

  • Day 19 → Docker containerization
  • Day 20 → Deployed to Render

Advanced (Days 21-24)

  • Day 21 → Pytest unit & integration tests
  • Day 22 → Database relationships
  • Day 23 → CORS & API contracts
  • Day 24 → In-memory caching

Capstone — To-Do App (Days 25-30)

  • Day 25 → PRD & planning
  • Day 26 → Full CRUD API
  • Day 27 → 10 automated tests
  • Day 28 → Deployed to Render
  • Day 29 → Filtering, pagination, docs
  • Day 30 → Final polish & README

The Capstone Project

Live URL:


Docs:

A fully production-ready To-Do App API with:

  • JWT authentication
  • Full CRUD with ownership
  • Priority levels and filtering
  • Pagination
  • 10 automated tests
  • Full Swagger documentation

What I Learned

30 days of consistent building taught me more
than months of passive learning.

The most important lessons:

  1. Consistency beats intensity
  2. Build in public — it keeps you accountable
  3. Every concept builds on the previous one
  4. Documentation is part of the product
  5. Tests give you confidence to keep building

What's Next

This is not the end — it's the foundation.
The next step is building more complex systems,
contributing to open source and preparing for
the Elevate career development meetup.

Thank you GDGoC Bowen for this challenge. 🙏

Day 30 done. The journey continues. 🔥

GDGoCBowen30dayChallenge

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