Week 1 & 2

Week 1 started out with a lot of optimism. I started out by mapping out what I needed to learn over the next couple of months. I quickly understood it was a bad idea, as I was already overwhelmed with the amount of things I wished to learn. To make it easier, I narrowed in on two main learning goals for the week. First was Git. I learned the basic command line/terminal git commands, which would enable me to document any projects I do from my local repository to my GitHub repository. I’m doing this as a habit builder, which would help me in the industry once I have that dream job. Here’s a glimpse of the main commands I learned:

• git init > initializes a new repository in the current project directory. This command sets up the project to use Git for version control by creating a hidden folder to track changes.
• git add ”filename”/(dot) > tells Git to start tracking changes for a specific file named “filename” or all the changes in the repository by using ‘.’ (dot) as a collective for all the files. This adds all the changes to a staging area.
• git status > shows the current state of your project, telling you which files have changed and are ready to be committed.
• git commit -m “message” > shows the current state of your project, telling you which files have changed and are ready to be committed, along with an optional message.
• git remote add <name> > connects your local project to a remote repository at the given URL, using the specified name as a reference. Before this, you need to create a remote repository on GitHub or any other cloud-based repository hoster.
• git remote set-url <name> <new_url> > updates the URL for the remote repository named “origin” to a new URL. You can get this URL from the GitHub repository you created for the particular project.
• git push <remote_name> <branch_name> > uploads your local changes to a remote repository, allowing you to share your work with others or synchronize it across different devices.

These are the important must-know commands of Git, which are the least expected by a jobseeker. Other than the commands, concepts like how the Git architecture works, staging areas, etc. are good to know. Two excellent resources I used to learn are TechTFQ’s 35-minute video and this 4-minute video. Learning Git took me 2 days, and I’m pretty confident in my current status.

My second goal for the week was to be confident and gain ultimate expertise in basic SQL commands. While looking for resources, I stumbled upon the DataLemur website. DataLemur is primarily a website that offers practice questions for SQL, data science, statistics, and machine learning interviews. However, it also has a comprehensive SQL tutorial, right from the basics to the advanced stuff. Along with the explanation, you also get practice problems for the specific topics, some of which are real interview questions asked by companies in real interviews. Over the next couple of days, I finished the basic section of the tutorial. The topics included SELECT, WHERE, operators (AND, OR, NOT), filtering (BETWEEN, IN, LIKE), and lastly, ORDER BY.

However, after completing the basics, I had to temporarily divert my attention to prepare for an interview I got selected for. I had two back-to-back interview rounds over the course of four days. The first was an HR screener, which was just a basic exploration of my profile and a quick chat about the role and the responsibilities. The second interview was a technical discussion with the hiring manager. I explained my previous experience and academic projects in detail. Overall, it was an enriching experience, and I’m still waiting to hear about the outcome.

After the second interview, I resumed my SQL journey. Having cleared my basics, I started out by completing a basic iPhone dataset exploration project using SQL, which I have posted on GitHub. I also got to test the git skills I learned while uploading the local project repository to GitHub. After completing the project, I started the intermediate section of the SQL tutorial on DataLemur. The topics included the aggregate functions (SUM, MIN, MAX, AVG, COUNT), DISTINCT, GROUP BY and HAVING clause, arithmetic operators in SQL, MATH functions, handling NULL values, a CASE statement, and lastly, JOINS. While navigating through the intermediate section, I also got practice SQL interviews from LinkedIn, Google, and Tesla. I also began to solve HackerRank SQL questions. All the questions I solved, along with their solutions, have been posted in my GitHub repository. As I solve more SQL problems, I’ll continue to update this repository so keep an eye out!

This was an overall glimpse of my past two weeks! Happy learning, and remember to be kind to others, keep drinking water, and be a responsible resident of Earth!