Retro’ing and Debugging 2024

This is a submission for the 2025 New Year Writing challenge: Retro’ing and Debugging 2024.

Reflecting on My Journey Through 2024

The year 2024 was an incredible year of growth, challenges, and achievements. It was a year where I ventured into various domains of software development, explored new technologies, and truly broadened my horizons. Here’s a retrospective of how the year shaped my journey as a developer.

The Beginning: Laying the Foundation

I started 2024 by diving into the basics of web development. Learning HTML, CSS, and JavaScript laid the groundwork for my journey. As I gained confidence, I created a few basic projects to practice what I had learned.

One of my standout early projects was a GitHub Profile README Generator built using Bootstrap. It allowed users to customize and generate their GitHub profile readmes effortlessly. This project became the submission for my degree course, Web Programming Languages. You can check out the project here.

Exploring React

After completing my foundational journey, I ventured into React. I learned about states, props, functional components, and class components. While I was still exploring React, I came across the Headstarter Fellowship and applied for their Software Engineering Fellowship. To my surprise and excitement, I got accepted as a fellow!

Interestingly, while I hadn’t fully mastered React, I ended up building projects during the fellowship using Next.js, which is a React framework. Many developers typically learn React first before moving on to Next.js, but I dove straight into Next.js and didn’t face any issues transitioning back to React later. This experience highlighted the flexibility of both tools and boosted my confidence in learning frameworks.

Headstarter Fellowship

Week 1: I built my first portfolio using basic HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
Week 2: I created a Pantry Tracker web application. Through this project, I learned to integrate Firebase as a backend for web applications. Before this, I thought Firebase was only for mobile apps since I had used it with Flutter. This project inspired me to build my first AI-powered application: a recipe generator that used pantry items as input to suggest recipes. This was my first encounter with integrating AI into web applications.
Week 3: I developed a Customer Support Chatbot.
Week 4: I developed a Rate My Professor app using retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) techniques. This introduced me to the world of RAG.
Week 5: I built an AI Flashcards application, using Clerk for authentication and Stripe for payments.
Next 2 Weeks: I worked on a customer support chatbot, followed by a To-Do application where I explored TailwindCSS, TypeScript, and Convex as a Backend-as-a-Service. Participated in a headstarter hiring hackathon and built a text to speech project for Pam Auto.

The fellowship also introduced me to hackathons. This was a game-changer as I got to collaborate, innovate, and compete with amazing minds.

The Open-Source World: Hacktoberfest

In October, I participated in Hacktoberfest 2024, which marked my entry into the open-source community. Prior to this, I had little understanding of how open source worked. During the event:

• I contributed to 4 projects.
• My pull requests got merged.
• Recieved Badges and got into Hacktoberfest Hall of Fame
• I discovered the Dev Community, which inspired me to participate in the Hacktoberfest Writing Challenge, where I submitted my first blog entry.

Certifications and Hackathons: Pushing Boundaries

I earned the Postman Student Expert Certification, which sharpened my API testing and documentation skills. Additionally, I participated in several hackathons, each providing unique learning opportunities:

• NASA Space Apps Challenge: Built an Orrery Web App to showcase near-Earth objects.
• Microsoft Hack Together: RAG Hack: Developed a RAG-based application to query PDFs.
• Hack49 Global Hackathon: Built a health application.
• Codédex Mini Holiday Hackathon: Created a pixelated portfolio.
• Assembly AI Challenge and Frontend Challenge (December Edition): Participated in DEV Challenges to test my frontend and AI development skills.

Blogging and DevOps: Sharing Knowledge

At the start of the year, I ventured into DevOps and began writing blogs to share my learnings. Topics included:

• Linux
• Shell Scripting
• Git
• Python

You can explore my blogs here.

Lessons Learned

• Consistency is Key: Small, consistent efforts lead to significant progress.
• Embrace Challenges: Every hackathon, project, and task brought new learning opportunities.
• Community is Everything: Collaborating with others helped me grow exponentially.
• Stay Curious: Exploring diverse technologies like Firebase, RAG, and AI broadened my skill set.

Looking Ahead

2024 was a year of immense growth, and I’m excited to carry this momentum into 2025. My goals include diving deeper into AI/ML, exploring serverless architecture, and contributing more to open source.

Here’s to a year of learning, building, and growing. Cheers to 2025!