My Public Commitment to the #100DaysOfCode Challenge

This is my public commitment to the #100DaysOfCode challenge, started by Alexander Kallaway. I’ve been hearing a lot about this challenge recently, and I thought I’d give it a try.I’m using this post both as a form of public commitment and a weekly log to track my progress.Here is my formal commitment on twitter:

And my fork of the 100-days-of-code repo on GitHub:

iyaja/100-days-of-code_100-days-of-code - Fork this template for the 100 days journal - to keep yourself accountable (multiple languages…_github.com

In this article (which will be updated on a weekly basis from today- 4th July 2018 till I complete the challenge), I’ll be sharing my experience, thoughts, goals, plans, accomplishments, courses and tutorials used, and progress from the challenge.

I’ll start off with how I’ve planned the challenge as of now (day 1), but I would be naive expect things not to change as the challenge goes on. Also, there are a few changes I’ve decided to make to the challenge, to better suit my style. Firstly, I will be including online resources like Freecodecamp, Codewars, Udacity etc. in my daily time counter. This is because I’m not a very experienced developer, and I still have a lot to learn. I will not, however, be including online courses that separate the videos and programming heavily, like Coursera, Udemy etc. to stay true to the challenge. I take Udacity as an exception (at least, initially) since I’m already halfway through one of their courses: Kotlin Bootcamp for Programmers. This course should be over soon, after which I’ll try to stay away from online video courses (for the challenge).

Source: https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/0*P9KRKAa69i9G5CFd.jpg

Goals

My main goal for the challenge (for the first round, at least) is to learn and become proficient with javascript. Eventually, I hope to build up my skills to a point where I can focus on development with Ethereum and Solidity, and let the javascript portion of building Dapps (decentralised applications) — the web interface, Web3, etc. comes naturally. I recently signed up for an online course: Decentralized Applications ,by The School of AI (founded by Siraj Raval). The course was excellent, but my lack of experience with javascript prevented me from completing it. To put it down simply, these are the things I’d like to get exposed to during the course of the challenge:

1. Building simple web apps
2. One or more javascript frameworks (I have currently planned to learn one from: Vue, react, flutter, angular, node, and ionic)
3. Learn and build a deep learning project using tensorflow.js
4. Build up enough experience to start focusing on development with Ethereum and Solidity.

Plan

At present, I have a list of online resources that I will be consulting to build up my knowledge before tackling real projects:

1. Kotlin- Udacity course (linked above)
2. freeCodeCamp
3. Flutter- Udacity course
4. Javascript 30
5. codewars

But like I mentioned above, I’ll probably get more resources and/or decide not to use one of the above resources. I’ll be sure to add updates as and when they happen.

Final Notes and Help

Like I said, I’m not a very experienced developer, and my interests lie mostly in the more mathematical and theoretical aspects of computer science, but I thought I’d give this challenge a try for the fun of it. If anyone reading this article is familiar/experienced with javascript, has completed the 100 days of code challenge, or has any recommended resources, please let me know. And with that, I now start my weekly log and the 100DaysOfCode challenge!

Source: http://www.finaldraftdesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/100DaysofCode_1200x500.jpg

Week 0

Well, I guess my thoughts for week 0 are basically everything I have above. I’ll probably have more to talk about for week 1, once I’ve actually had some time with the challenge.

Week 1

My first week with #100DaysOfCode didn’t play out like I initially planned. I started off with the Kotlin Bootcamp for Programmers course on Udacity, and I expected to complete it by the end of this week (today). However, I found myself clinging on to the minimum time requirement of the challenge. On most days, I would immediately shut my laptop and carry on with my other work, completing the daily hour of code only for the sake of keeping up with the challenge. But upon further thought yesterday, I’ve concluded that I shouldn’t set a fixed time to code everyday, but should instead code whenever I feel like it. I suspect that this approach will work better, and I’ll try it out for the rest of the week.

I’ve also decided to join the #100DaysOfMLCode challenge started by Siraj Raval. It released just after I started this one, so I didn’t really have a choice between the two. I might have joined that one instead of this challenge (as deep learning is something I’m personally much more interested in than web development), but I guess I still develop my skills better, so it’s still a win.

Overall, I feel that I didn’t accomplish much this week. In general, I think I wasn’t motivated enough to work on the Kotlin course: I don’t have any plans for a native android app anytime soon, I wasn’t a part of my plan/goal for the #100DaysOfCode challenge, and no-one that I know is doing it. I think I’ll put the Kotlin course on hold next week while I start working on Javascript, which is part of my initial plan for the challenge.

Update

As some of you might have noticed, I haven’t really been following up with the challenge. I actually stopped about a week ago, but I haven’t updated this post. In short, I didn’t find myself actually achieving much from the challenge, and it was almost as if I was mindlessly trying to keep up with coding an hour a day without really thinking through what exactly I was doing and why I was doing it.

I think it’s important for me to think a little more on how I need to improve my coding skills, and if the #100DaysOfCode challenge is actually the right one for me. My opinions have also shifted after watching this video:

All in all, I’m not exactly sure how to proceed from here. I still have my plans written down(for both #100DaysOfCode and #100DaysOfMLCode), but I’m not too sure if continuing with the challenge is the best way to go. I found myself too stuck up with the timer — constantly looking at the clock, convincing myself that sitting and staring at the code was considered “work”, and following other counter-productive habits.

From here, I’ll probably continue my updates only when I believe that I have entered a consistent state of repetition and/or I have actually completed a significant chunk of the goals that I set out for the challenge.