angular shapes

something to prove

That was the whole point of the career change. I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it. I wanted to prove that I could learn a new skill and apply it to a new career. I wanted to prove that I could be a software developer. Well, things turned out better than I hoped.

Not only did I land a job early in the year, I could also say that I brought something to the table and was able to contribute to the team. I was even able to take on a leadership role after the person who hired me left, though I do miss being able to just focus on the code. Working in a fast pace environment was a challenge, having to meet deadlines and deliverables on time, but it was fun. Most importantly it was fun. The team that I am working with are great people and I am learning a lot from them.

something to learn

I'm glad that I was able to pick up some skills that weren't related to work.

• Practicing touch typing is a real hack, being able to type > 100 WPM feels like a super power. But the real benefit is that I can type without looking at the keyboard, which is a great skill to have when coding.
• Using vim motions in VS Code was another win, being able to move around the file without using the mouse makes it feel like it's a game. Not to mention the opportunities to start using neovim and customize it to my liking.
• Investing the time to pick up rust as my first typed language gave me a insight into lower level programming. While Rust is the total opposite of JavaScript, having to deal with the borrow checker and the compiler was a great learning experience. I'm built a couple small projects with Rust and I'm looking forward to using it more in the future.

something to improve

Despite the wins, it's still early times for me. Being able to code on the frontend only does limit the opportunities that I can take on. I would like to be able to contribute to the backend as well, it is where majority of the business logic resides and where the source of truth is stored.

Things are still slightly rough around the edges, I can't say that I'm a great dev yet, it has been a great start though.