January 2022 Wrapped
Intro
January 2022 was a hit.
I learned so much. I interacted with various people around. I engaged in deep conversations. I had smol achievements that I'm low key proud of.
Beginning
I had some goals in mind when I entered this year. You could say resolutions? But not really. They were SMART goals.
And also, I just didn't start, I wanted to make some things habitual - that's why I started a few weeks into december.
Scheduling things.
I started using my GCal more often, rather strictly. Having an hour by hour track rather makes it toxic.
A better approach? Scheduling types of tasks and assigning slots in your day.
- Research
- Dev Work
- CP (Competitive Programming)
- Exploring Stuff (Twitter, GitHub, etc.)
- Talking to people (Scheduling 30 to 60 minute calls)
So, now we have broadly categorized the tasks, and now fixing slots for it. Say — 8 PM to 10 PM, for CP.
Important Note
Everyone has a different cheatsheet. What works for me might not work for others, might as well might not even work for me in the future.
So, essentially keep analyzing, keep tweaking your workflow.
Blog - Writing
The start was a bit rocky, thanks to Covid!
Although, I managed to ship this blog — Undirected Graph.
I was inspired by people like Tanisha Sabherwal, who wrote for 100 straight days.
The best writing advice that keeps me going is from David Perell. Literally the best!
Winning a Hackathon
This was a disaster. From literally breaking down on Day 1, to being the runner-ups of the Hackathon, this was overwhelming.
I did not participate in any Hackathon after winning Code For Good - JPMC's Hackathon, which was months ago. The environment and the folks there were amazing, albeit competitive and a little toxic.
So, I was worried, I was scared. I had set some expectations from myself, sub-consciously. And that was the reason for the breakdown.
But there were people like Harsh Kapadia and Vivek Namaye, who made me realise - There's nothing to lose.
Especially at the stage we are at.
Even if we wouldn't have won, I would still have been really happy. Not only because of the realizations, but because our approach to this hackathon was different.
We spent a lot of time building the architecture, designing the workflow, and building the userflow. Which in turn reduced our coding time.
Counter-intutive? Yes.
The tradeoff in a Hackathon: Speed over quality
But something that we are proud of is, we tried to follow ideal software development practices.
Architecture ~ Design ~ Code
Never have I ever built such designs, and brought them to life this fast, it is crazy!
Presentation and Documentation
After the Hackathon, we at GDSC TSEC organised a GDSC AfterHours — Project Showcase. Since, a lot of projects were built that week, we thought it would be the best to have one.
After a few discoveries and observations, I realized that I speak passionately about presenting and documentating your work and journey.
And that's when I published — Presentation and Documentation.
Contributed to 100ms-docs
I was going through 100ms-live, because a friend works there.
Then, I started exploring the 100ms-docs, found the GitHub repository.
I took a glance at their opened issues and found one (#241) which seemed like a quick fix.
Apparently not.
Turned out I was scratching my head at it for hours now. Either this is an actual problem OR it is very trivial and I am messing up big time :embarassed:
I tried so many combinations now, but also learned SO much haha.
Find the thought process here.
A smol contribution into 100ms-docs. PR (#404) merged. 🚀
Mentoring a Hackathon
This was surprising. As of 31st January, I will be officially mentoring a Hackathon in February.
And that's a wrap.
Fin
I want to keep writing, keep engaging with experienced people, keep building stuff. Having a public commitment might push me to do more.
In February and onwards, I want to explore deep into backend, start with Flutter and keep writing. I also want to try to understand the budget that was released this FY2022.
Cheers to Consistency and Learning! <3