When I was looking through the list of my stories, I’ve noticed that this one is going to be #30. Which means that I’ve started writing them exactly 30 weeks ago.
On June 3, 2022 I just decided to begin documenting my thoughts, learning process, projects I work on and some other things related to it. And, as I like having a streak-type approach, I set myself a goal to post a story every Friday.
A small disclaimer: I don’t consider myself popular and try not to be arrogant, but, as I know that there are a few people who read me, I just wanted to mention that this and the next week’s stories will be more like a summary/resume rather than my usual writing about projects or coding (the holidays season and my personal goals demand it).
I didn’t plan anything more particular. Just wanted to sit down in front of my keyboard every Friday and type a bunch of paragraphs on the topic that seems to be most relevant to the current week.
By that time I had already completed several courses and was in the middle of my main program on OpenClassrooms and the first thing that came to mind was to make a list of the resources I had tried so far and share some thoughts about each one. So, I wrote my Newbie thoughts on Web Development courses. It also helped me to have some structure on what I had used and could re-use in the future.
A week after I decided to make an addition to that story and wrote about coding resources I tend to use. I have no intention to be unique, so my choices are rather obvious, but perhaps they could be useful anyway.
A couple of stories later, I wrote about Making an interactive text adventure game. Now this one is a peculiar little one for me. I don’t focus on views, reads, shares, etc., but, as Medium sends you some stats sometimes, I’m still a bit curious about how it goes. Funny thing, this is the story that keeps getting views (at least, that’s what stats emails tell me). I understand that I used a kind of clickbait title, although that was not the intention, and even the first couple of paragraphs there say that it’s not a guide and I just followed the video from YouTube, filling it with my own content. I guess it still draws some attention, but my other guess is that people usually open it, take a peak and close it, as it’s not really a step-by-step instruction on how to make a game, but my process of thinking while doing something similar. I still like it though, as I had fun writing the story for that little project, so in the end I assume that’s what counts.
Apart from that I’ve tried making a few guides or at least sharing my approach on doing some things (like the deploying process for example).
While jumping from one tech stack to another, I wanted to check Next.js and scribbled down a few thoughts about it. It was more like pondering rather than anything in particular, but seems like Next.js in the title triggered some key-wording, and I’ve noticed that it draw a bit of attention (not saying it blew up the views, just seemed a bit higher than usual).
Then I got interested in reading through the new React documentation and decided to make some use out of it by making a kind of a portfolio site. It turned out to be more like a sandbox site where I put various bits of code blocks and see how they work and interact with each other, but I learnt quite a few things and decided to share them in a few stories.
In October (or let’s use a proper slang — Hacktober), I took part in Hacktoberfest and, while my impressions were still fresh, made a story about the open-source projects contributions. I’ve shared some suggestions and links there, so hopefully somebody could find it useful (as contributing really teaches you a lot).
There are also some stories in the format of 5-things to do something. I wasn’t planning on following any trends, simply had a few resources/thoughts to share, and it came out like, for example, 10 Useful Web Development Tools. At least I can re-read it myself from time to time if I need a link or ideas.
Recently I was re-watching one of the Udemy courses while also remaking its projects to something else, so a couple of other stories came out of it (ToDo app and Crypto Finder in particular).
I haven’t mentioned all of my stories (it’s too much links already, I’m sorry for those who keep on reading if I got carried away). I rather tried to pick up some that I remember most. After all I enjoy writing and looking through my past texts. That is also what many people suggest for coding learning, and I think I’m going to vote for that as well (but frankly, that is useful for pretty much any other type of learning or activity).
While I try not to focus on resolutions and promises, currently I intend to continue writing, regardless of whether it draws any attention or not. Don’t want to sound egoistic but I mostly do it for myself (the fact that the texts are shared simply gives me the feeling that the thing that was on my mind is more or less complete, and I can move on to the next one, otherwise the editing/adjusting process never stops).
The only other thing to mention here is probably that I’m trying to decide whether I want to use some personal space (blog-type site most likely), or a blogging platform should suffice, or maybe multiple platforms storing similar or same content with the links to the original text. I enjoy experimenting with various sources and take a peek at other platforms from time to time, that’s where this idea came from, but that’s a question for another time.
And here it is, my kind of summary for the 30 weeks of writing. If you’re still here, I thank you for reading, kind person.
