My experience
I have to say that Codeland 2019 was amazing! This was my very first tech conference and I've had nothing but great things to say about my experience. Everyone I've met at the conference gave me great advice and a warm welcome to the tech community. I believe this is important, especially as a code newbie because this sort of energy makes people excited to attend more conferences and to really expand their network.
Talks
I've always said I'd get into podcasts and anything involving listening as a way of learning, but I haven't started at all. Having the chance to sit and listen to each of the speakers at this conference was great. Every project/idea presented were unique and creative! Some of them had me questioning myself, "What am I going to build that'll change lives or impact someone?". This is nothing but positive feedback though. I'd assume there's not enough being done if people aren't inspiring others to go out and do something great. One of my favorite talks from that day was from BJ Burns. He shared his experience through art and discussed ways to encourage yourself on the journey to becoming a software developer.
Workshops: Intro to Git, GitHub, CLI and more
I chose this workshop mainly because I have no clue how GitHub works. I found this lab very informative and it made me feel as if I were in a classroom but social setting. We learned about pull requests, cloning repositories, the importance of "ReadMe" being present, etc. I've always heard "Git" and "GitHub" but never knew the difference. From my understanding, GitHub is the social layer where people do the hosting, communicating and discussions, whereas Git is the version control system.
I look at it as Git being the tool and GitHub being the toolbox. Feel free to comment any better explanations of the two! 😀
Reflecting
One takeaway from this conference is that nothing has to be perfect in order to be sent out. You can always go back and make edits/ tweak things around. I felt like I needed to hear this mainly because it reflects how I should be with my work. I am a perfectionist at heart and will not put out anything unless it's on point. This doesn't mean you should not put effort into your work, but more so, do your best and be proud of that. We fear failure sometimes and the thought of making a mistake when that's what we need in order to grow! Failure isn't the end.
I look forward to attending CodelandNYC next year and I encourage anyone to attend in the future as well.
Top comments (6)
You definitely got this right! Two other popular alternatives to Github are Gitlab and Bitbucket
How's Flatiron school going? I am an alumnus from 2014, Saron Yitbarek graduated from Flatiron as well!
Those are two things for me to definitely look into.
Flatiron is going pretty well! I’m learning to discipline myself and manage my time better for sure. That’s awesome! I didn’t know this about Saron either. I’d love any advice you can give!
You got the distinction between Git and GitHub right 👍. You don't need to use Git only for GitHub though, version control is important when working on your projects, even if you aren't using the "toolbox". I remember some of the managers I used to work with would use Git and GitHub interchangeably and I kept trying to explain the difference to them. 😅
Codeland was my first ever tech conference and I was glad I went myself.
All the best Valena 😊
Thank you, Marvin!
Agreed. Amazing to be there!