Noob to !Noob
This article is all about my programming journey from Noob to !Noob. About me from 2016–2020.
1st Year
It’s 2016 and I’m in 1st year of my Computer Science degree course and I have no idea about programming, even about computers to an extent. I have 10+ errors in my C “Hello World” program and I am copying factorial programs in my examination (shame on me).
2nd Year
Juniors took admissions and it hit me so hard when a junior and now my good friend started to ask me questions about Software Engineering and I couldn’t answer any of his questions, that’s when it all started :)
Started to learn the C language after the 2nd-semester exams in vacations and that’s just it. I had no idea that things like Algorithms exist and then I started with web development, took a front-end course, and got to know about Open Source Software Development and started to learn some backend things using Node.js, Express.js (don’t worry if you don’t know these). I also built some basic React.js projects during this time.
3rd year
In summers, attended a Machine Learning workshop but that didn’t impress me at that time.
Heard about GSoC (Google Summer of Code) program, great stipend, great learning, Google tag, let’s get it. Had to learn about Git, GitHub, open-source development cycle, code readability, modularity, testing, best practices, etc. After many sleepless nights and sleepy afternoons doing contributions, I got selected in Mozilla.
4th year
In vacations, I worked on Mozilla’s Firefox Accounts Security Dashboard project for 13 weeks for GSoC and now the final year is here, placements season is about to start and now I know that Data Structures and Algorithms are important but it’s too late now (thank God that I didn’t think that). I got enrolled in a course to learn the fundamentals and started solving Algorithmic problems on coding platforms.
November 2019, December 2019,….,July 2020 finally I got a job in a service-based company. I wasn’t happy about anything here except that I got a job and someone is ready to pay me to write code for them, a lot of code (seriously). I resigned from there in only 24 days, again preparing and applying for jobs. Now it’s 9th December 2020 and I got a job at Zomato as a Software Development Engineer — 1, and I like the energy, work and everything here. My manager is super cool but still, there are a lot of things to learn.
Summary: So, this was about my journey to my first job. This was what I did and to know how I did it, keeping my first-year skills in mind, let’s go here!
