When I first started playing around with web development, I came across the #100DaysOfCode challenge. I had just started a Udemy web development course and the new year had just started, so I figured, why not? On January 6, 2020, I committed to the challenge on Twitter and figured I’d be done by April.
I finished the challenge on July 17, about six months later. Why did I take three months longer to complete the challenge? In a word, life. Work got in the way sometimes; other days, I was too tired or I felt under the weather. I took a trip here and there; I moved to a new city. Oh, and a pandemic swept the world and dramatically shook up my normal routine. According to the official #100DaysOfCode site, missing one day is allowed as long as you make it up, but I definitely missed more than one day.
But I have decided that my experience doing #100DaysOfCode still counts, because I feel like I engaged with the spirit of the challenge. I learned how to fit coding into my life, and I learned what obstacles I needed to keep an eye on. I learned about what I wanted to get out of my new coding practice and how to keep my education moving forward. Not to mention, I learned a TON of stuff about coding itself.
When I started #100DaysOfCode, my coding skills were still very rudimentary; we’re talking basic HTML with inline CSS. By the time I finished the challenge, I knew enough about HTML and CSS to start building a pretty nice-looking website for a virtual conference that I’m planning, not to mention some vanilla Javascript, jQuery, node.js, and Bootstrap. I know how to use APIs, how to build servers, and how to deploy apps. I’m miles beyond where I started and to me, that counts as a win.
So even though I didn’t follow the #100DaysOfCode rules to the letter, I still say that I completed the challenge. I’m so glad that I set this goal for myself, because I don’t think that I would have learned as much as I did without it. I loved every minute of it, and I fully intend to keep moving forward in my coding journey because of it.
Anyway, here are the top five things I learned about coding while completing the #100DaysOfCode challenge:
- Get good at Googling
- There’s no one right way to solve a problem
- People are usually willing to help you if you ask for it
- If you get stuck, take a break
- It’s important to review things more than once to really learn it
Kathryn Vela 