What have I learned in January of 2020

#todayilearned #beginners #javascript

Sup my dudes!

Let's start with goals, what are your goals for 2020? One of my goals is to become a better professional and to be able to disseminate my knowledge with more people during this journey. So, I'm here to talk about how that first month of 2020 was and what I learned that can help you.

Starting with courses. During the first month of 2020, I took 7 different courses, if I count on the end of December (which was when I started chasing my goals) I took 11 courses. Not only that, but I made reviews about the courses on Linkedin, encouraging my followers to join them. But what is the purpose of taking so many courses? I believe that by having contact with different paradigm languages, I was able to learn to think and see the problem in another way. I think this is fundamental for us developers, because, with the theoretical background and practical knowledge of the courses, it is possible to develop alternative routes for solving complex problems. Besides always being updated.

However, what is the use of knowing if your solution is not available for the public to check and suggest changes? Or worse, why monopolize the solution to your problem? That was how Marcos, a friend of mine, convinced me to contribute more to the community. I accepted the suggestion and followed along with him, publishing an article every week at dev.to and always trying to share my knowledge on Linkedin, that way I trained my English too. Not only that, but I decided to put into practice what I was learning every day and share it on Github. Some days I admit that I couldn't do anything and just changed a line (hehehe), but the vast majority (believe me) was trial and error in the commits and pushes of life.

What happened in the middle of January however was unexpected. My college professor, Otávio Lemos, has been posting videos every week for some time on his channel, always trying to spread knowledge in the programming area. And recently he made a video about reading technical books and how important they are, he suggested reading one book a month. At first, I did not consider reading, I thought it would not be carried forward. It was when a few days later my friend Daniel tells me that he is following the teacher's tip and started reading the book Clean Code by Uncle Bob, it aroused my interest and curiosity for the book. The teacher had already commented on this book before, but seeing that my friends were reading motivated me to try, to make things more interesting I created a deadline for reading, I would read the entire book until February 10th, I would have more or less 20 days. I started well, read 10% of the book in 1 day, then 5% in the second and then 2.5% and stagnated, I thought the book was easy, even after the author's warning at the beginning of the book saying this was not a book whatever, it was a theoretical and practical book, which would involve a lot of reflection. I started to reflect a lot on what the author said and analyze my codes, I started to see that I needed to refactor a lot and to analyze even the name that gave the variables. Today I am in 30% of the book and I think that I will not finish in the stipulated period, but I know that only that 30% is enough to write many articles, it is a lot of knowledge to be shared.

That was my January. February promises, intending to finish the book, I started to study (again) algorithms and data structure, I'm taking 3 more courses and creating personal projects that add value to my repository. The goal is to finish one of these courses later this month and finish a personal project. Last month I was unable to finish my portfolio due to laziness, I hope this month will not happen again.

So, take the following with you, always try to learn more, find the motivation to go forward. Learn, but don't forget to share the knowledge so that more people learn together with you. Finally, read technical books, they are very important.

Effort outweighs talent when talent doesn't strive!

Before I forget, here are some useful links:

Courses I took in January:

Courses that i'm doing:

Otavio's channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJA8NGYc2tI

Uncle's Bob book: https://www.amazon.com.br/C%C3%B3digo-limpo-Robert-C-Martin/dp/8576082675/ref=asc_df_8576082675/

My projects: https://github.com/matheusgomes062