How Google Udacity Challenge Scholarship for Mobile Web Specialist track changed my life
A few months before, I was scrolling through twitter feed, an article caught my eyes. It was about Google, in association with Udacity, offering scholarships for aspiring developers. While filling out the application form, I made a decision which elevated my life to a new whole new level! I decided to quit my LAMP developer job, switch to JavaScript world and change my focus to modern tech and open-source contributions!!
I’ll never forget the moment, which I found that mail saying “you have been accepted into the Google India Challenge Scholarship”. Words are not enough to express that feeling. On Feb 14th, I stepped into the challenge course via Udacity classroom.
I was already familiar with Udacity, done many free courses before. The course content was well laid out and neatly explained as usual. But there were some key differences when it comes to the scholarship. The vibrant community played a crucial part throughout. Experts were there to address issues. And contributions were well appreciated.
Syllabus included PWA concepts and ES6 in detail, which was exactly what I was looking for! The Challenge Scholarship does not offer a certificate directly, but selected candidates will receive the entry ticket to the nano-degree offered by Udacity. I learned VueJS and NodeJS in parallel, which helped me to experiment and contribute to the community. Gradually, I realized my passion on contributions and helping others. It gave me satisfaction more than anything else! I was always dreamed to be a good contributor to the open-source community, but via this program, I’ve actually gained skills to do the same.
Now I’m pursuing a career in web development. I’m sure that these newly gained skills will give me an edge. Basically, I’m sprinting through the path shown in the below image for the last few months, till this moment.
The real change happened when I stepped into the world of Progressive Web Apps aka PWAs. It conveys some game changing technologies which will pave way for web apps of tomorrow. Today is the future, right?
