Introduction 🎬

When I read the Dev Retro 2022 Announcement in Hashnode's Townhall, I saw this as an opportunity to write my first blog on the topic "reflect on your journey as a developer and share your experiences from the past year". When I came across this post from Hashnode I got super excited as for a very long time I wanted to start writing technical blogs or what people generally say "Blogging " but I was immensely scared to create and write my first blog, so this post acted as a catalyst in my first step towards technical writing.

So before we move forward and I retrospect on my journey of 2022, I think it's better that I introduce myself.

Hello 👋 ! I am Vishrut Agarwalla, I have done my Engineering in Electronics and Telecommunication from Pune Institute of Computer Technology, Pune with First Class in it. After this, I joined an IT company called Eurofins IT Solutions which is based in Bengaluru, Karnataka, India as an Associate Software Engineer and then after working there for 6 months or 0.5 years I just resigned from there and now I am looking for Remote Job Opportunity, working with a community called GrowInCommunity and also trying my best to contribute to Open Source also which you can check out from my GitHub profile.

So now moving forward with my retrospective blog...

My Challenges

Before joining Eurofins IT Solutions, I have heard about Open Source but all my friends and folks from my college believed and told me that Open Source is very difficult, for Pro Developers, Open Source is not for anyone.

Secondly, I was not at all aware of Remote Jobs/Remote Work. Also, I didn't have a good background as, to begin with,

I didn't have a degree in Computer Science (CS) or IT (Information Technology). So, my application was rejected in the first screening round itself.
Then, I didn't have a good academic record first things first I was not from a tier I engineering college like IIT or something and also my marks were not soo good and I also had backlogs with a year drop.
So, I was not eligible for most of the placement drives. So I had a very difficult time getting a good job.
I had no knowledge of DSA (Data Structures and Algorithms) which is a very specific and particular requirement if you want to land a developer's job.
And lastly, I didn't have any good projects to showcase to the recruiters nor did I have any internships or anything and there were a lot of gaps in my learnings too as I didn't good hold on coding.

My Learnings 🧑‍💻 and Journey of 2022

At the beginning of 2022, I started looking for more and more jobs off-campus and also applying to any off-campus opportunities that I came across and also in the meantime, I started with DSA (Data Structures and Algorithms) as most of the companies required it and asked it either in their pre-screening test or in their interview round.
After that, I gave numerous pre-screening tests and got a chance to be interviewed for many organizations, while doing that I gained a lot of boost and confidence in my skill set and also I learned the art of giving an interview, asking the right questions, different ways of answering the questions of the interviewer and many more things.
I learned the pattern of questions and their solutions in the pre-screening test and the interviews. But still, I was very disheartened that I was not able to successfully convert these opportunities into a full-time job.
Then, this golden opportunity came to me when I landed at Eurofins IT Solutions as an Associate Software Engineer position.
There for the 3-4 months, I was trained as a Full Stack Developer where I learned a lot of tech stacks.
- For the Front end - I learned HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, TypeScript and AngularJS.
- For the Back end - I learned C# and ASP.NET Framework.
- For Database - I learned MySQL and at last some basics of DevOps with Agile and Scrum too.
After that, we worked on some of the projects which were assigned to us during training and there was one milestone project also was Petzey, an online Pet Clinic Service using all the above-mentioned tech stack we learned, we had to implement it using it.
After that, I came across Kunal Kushwaha's Youtube Channel and the most OP person Kunal Kushwaha, where initially I came to learn DSA in Java but later on I learned about Open Source and how easy it is to contribute to it if you are eager to learn.
Then, I was introduced to Remote Work/Remote Jobs and ways you can get it in one of his videos and then I started to wonder that if I work hard I can achieve it.
And in the meanwhile, I quit Eurofins IT Solutions due to some personal reasons and joined the hunt for remote jobs, good open-source projects and also the ways through which I can contribute too.
After, quitting Eurofins, I also came to know from Kunal and many other folks about so many amazing platforms like Twitter, Hashnode and many more. I also learned how much impact learning and sharing in public and being active on Twitter can make such a great impact on your profile and how it increases your credibility. Being active on Twitter gave me chance to connect with amazing folks like Kunal Kushwaha, Eddie Jaoude, Nikita Koselev and GrowInCommunity folks.
I have heard that writing blogs also do, but I still am yet to explore that part.
Then, Hacktoberfest 2022 came to my knowledge and where I decided to contribute to the Open Source for the first time to my surprise, I successfully completed it with all my 4 PRs getting merged into the top 40k people and I got amazing swags too.

While learning in Public and doing all this Hacktoberfest and Open Source Contributions, I also built many amazing projects and I am listing some of these :

🛒 E-commerce Website 🛒
- I have built an E-commerce website using TypeScript, ReactJS, Redux and GraphQL which contains functionalities such as:
- It has a category page for different category products like Tech, Clothes etc.
- It has a dropdown for different currencies and the value changes according to different currency selections.
- A product view page.
- A cart view, checkout and a mini cart view page too.
- This is the live website: Live Website.
- This is the Live Website View.

☕ Starbucks Redesign ☕

This is a Starbucks Clone project using HTML5, CSS3 and Vanilla JavaScript. For a smooth scrolling experience and animation, I have also added APIs such as Swiper API and ScrollReveal API.
Contains animations when scrolling.
Includes a dark and light mode. 🌞 🔄 🌑
Developed first with the Mobile First methodology, then for desktop.
Compatible with all mobile devices and with a beautiful and pleasant user interface.
This is the live website: Live Website.
This is the Preview of the Live Website.

📰 News App 📰

I built a news app using ReactJS and NewsAPI.
It has NewsAPI integrated with it which allows us to fetch live news data using this API.
This is the Repo to the NewsAPI: News App.

My Achievements 🏆

I got a decent job offer from Eurofins IT Solutions as Associate Software Engineer.
I completed the formal training which was assigned to me by the company and also worked on some of the projects on the company's codebase too.
Contributed to Open Source in Hacktoberfest 2022 Event.
Currently helping and trying to build our technical community called GrowInCommunity, where our initiative is to help folks who are just starting in tech or those who are in their freshman years and want to contribute to Open Source. So, we help them out with that.
I created many side projects some of which I have listed above section 👆 in the blog.

My Plans for 2️⃣0️⃣2️⃣3️⃣

🎓 Learning 🎓

In this New Year of 2023, I have decided to learn new frontend development skills like brushing up more with my JavaScript skills, getting proficient in ReactJS, learning and exploring more about Redux and many more things.

🏗️ Building Projects 🏗️

This year I have decided to dedicate 2 days of a week to building projects. Also, I have decided to participate in some Hackathons to increase my skills, learn new stuff and also to explore more in tech that I am still not aware of. I'll be looking to dedicate some spare time to building and deploying a small application that solves a real-world problem of some kind. Drop me a comment if you have any suggestions.

📝 Blogging 📝

Since I am starting out with Blogging. So, I am planning to be more consistent with writing and publishing articles throughout 2023. I'll be aiming to publish more and more articles on topics such as:

My learning journal
Project progress
Tutorials on a variety of subjects from tips and tricks to planning and building projects.
How to get Remote Jobs? How to build a community successfully?
How to contribute to Open Source?
How to start your career in Tech? So on and so forth.

Career Growth

This year I am planning to get a Remote Job and grow my Community, contribute to Open Source and also get a good amount of followers on Twitter 😆.

El Fin 👋🏽

Thanks for checking out my year-end retro, hopefully, you enjoyed the post and got something from it.

If you have blogged about your 2022 retro and your 2023 goals let me know in the comments, I'd love to check it out. If you haven't, I'd highly recommend doing so, it forced me to recognize some of my wins, challenges and shortcomings that I had either forgotten or yet to realize.

Dev Retro 2022 - A Tech Retrospective

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