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100 Days of Code challenge

100 Days of Code

If you're on Twitter and you're even slightly involved in the dev community, there's a chance you've seen the #100DaysOfCode hashtag floating around. It doesn't matter if you're brand new to development or if you've been a senior developer for years — the 100 Days of Code challenge is for everyone!

What is it?

I first heard about the 100 Days of Code challenge on the Code Newbie podcast when Alex Kallaway explained why he started the challenge for himself and how it's grown due to gaining traction on Twitter.

You can read the full rules on the official 100-days-of-code repo, but the main takeaway is this:

Dedicate one hour to coding each day for 100 days straight. If you can do this, by the end of the challenge, you will have 100 hours of knowledge and practice that you didn't have before, a routine that encourages you to continually hone your craft as a developer and, if you want it, a strong connection to a community of people who believe in continual learning.

My own 100 days

As of this blog post, I'm just beginning my 100 days of code, but I plan to hold myself accountable in several ways:

  1. Keep a daily log of my progress, thoughts, questions, etc.
  2. Post to Twitter each day
  3. Join a group of people who also want to do the challenge, so we begin together and finish together

I put so much work into my deep dive into web development in 2017, so now I want 2018 to be when I really focus on one language (JavaScript) and slowly but surely put in the practice to master it someday. That's my main goal, but my other goal is to have completed my career change by the end of the challenge.

I'll come back to update this post as big things happen, but if you want to follow along with my daily journey, you can read my daily log on my own 100-days-of-code repo and find me on Twitter.

Wish me luck!

UPDATE

You guys, I got a job as a software engineer! Just one-third of the way through this challenge, I officially made my career change, and now I'm actually being paid to code every day. Hurray! I've learned a lot in my own studies, but there's so much more to learn on the job, so I stopped doing the 100 Days of Code challenge to really focus on what I need to do at work. I'm keeping the repo active, however, because it has some excellent notes from my Grow With Google scholarship through Udacity. I'm also continuing to keep up with news, trends and developments in the world of coding (mostly in Javascript), so definitely check out my Twitter to see what else I'm focusing on.

For anyone else still doing the challenge, keep it up! There's a big chance it will pay off.