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Lutchenca Medeiros
Lutchenca Medeiros

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I feel stucked it and the only way to improve this is by coding more

This was made originally on CodeNewbie plataform, I will be posting about my #CNC2022 there so if you enjoy it please take a follow! :)

A short intro
Since 2020, I started to study and get into programming, but this path was not linear and until today I face some difficulties to improve my coding skills. I felt that I'm at a point where I know about all the basic stuff - variables, data components, functions, objects - but don't have a clue on how to apply it. _It's like a gap between theory and practical moves. _
Because of that feeling, I think that the best thing for me now, it's practicing and CodeNewbie Challenge 2022 seems the perfect opportunity to work on that and share with the community (if you don't know what this means, please check this!)

The main goal with this post it's introduce myself and share at what point I'm in and where I want to be later on:

My story
I have an advertising and marketing bachelor's degree, never felt Math or computing was for me. I (tough) was horrible on these topics and these create a gap between what I choose on college and what I really wanted to pursuit on my career. But (and a big but here) I never really enjoyed advertising and wanted to work remotely to other countries, so IT always seemed very attractive for me.

Wasn't all a waste of time tho, because this experience helped me a lot to learn about how market works, how to sell, how to make products workflow, business and all this kinda related stuff, and also improve it a lot my soft skills.

At the end of my marketing course I started learning Java on a free bootcamp provided by my University, and sincerely I didn't learn that much. Was my first contact with programming, I didn't have a clue on what's going on and after one month and a half I give up.

A year passed and my feeling to work with IT field and make advertising my past career was strong but on that time I started totally different: using YouTube videos, making practical exercises and following some tutorials with JavaScript, HTML and CSS. This way felt way easier and much more enjoyable and fun for me, so I didn't give up and here I am today!
(PS. I'm not saying Javascript its better than Java whatsoever, just want to enphasize that FOR ME, was way more easy and digestable)

Now I work as Project Manager, but want to improve my coding skills and be a better Web Developer overall.

What has worked

Touching on many stuff helped me to have a fullstack view on what a developer should do. I also made a lot of small projects, watch a bunch of tutorials and have made contact with the community. I think my best skill, it's to communicate and being accessible. Likewise, I also have a great support system that helps me with my doubts and offers an open space to discuss. I feel very involved and include with the community, even being a newbie.

What has NOT worked
It was great making a lot of small projects, but I was always following previews coding/tutorials, this definitively didn't help me. For the future, I'm going to make my own projects, creating from scratch. I also think it's better to focus on only one area, and for me will be frontend - at least for now.

What are my long-term goals
I want to make a project every month for the next 12 months.

What are my short-term goals
I want to make a commit every day for the next 5 weeks

Top comments (4)

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andypiper profile image
Andy Piper

I think these are great goals to set, to give yourself some momentum, and undoubtedly you'll learn more from following through on those. Good luck, and enjoy! Looking forward to seeing what you build.

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lutchenca profile image
Lutchenca Medeiros

Thanks! :D

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joelbonetr profile image
JoelBonetR 🥇 • Edited

It's totally nice that you made this introspection, most people simply don't do that and ens up in a frustration loop.

As you spotted, developing an end to end project gives you the big picture on what's happening and/or what should happen to reach a given goal.

I suggest you to create a project (frontend + backend + database) and to cycle over this same project making it bigger and making it better with concepts from design, UX, accessibility, devops and so on. This way you'll get a deep knowledge in the entire process.

This posts may help you:
Learning cheatsheet
Building an efficient portfolio from scratch

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lutchenca profile image
Lutchenca Medeiros

Thanks for the advice! Gonna try this :D