print("Hello, World!")

After much dilly-dallying, I have finally started my developer blog. I was on the fence on choosing between medium and dev.to, but ended up deciding upon dev.to, since it aligned with my goals better. I intend to use this blog to document my learning journey, connect with other developers, learn to communicate my thoughts better and most importantly, have fun along the way.

How about a little about me? (and some gyan nobody asked for)

I'm Bharath Valaboju from Hyderabad, India. I'm pursuing IIT Madras' Online BSc. in Programming and Data Science and I'm currently in the Diploma level. I possess an intermediate level understanding of python and have a beginner's understanding of Java and C. Coming to the less tech-y side of things, I love watching movies, playing video games, reading books and listening to music.

I've always loved computers for as long as I could tell. The idea of a machine theoretically being able to do anything that you ask of it always excited me. I have fond memories of installing games and running them. The installation processes always felt like magic, just not the kind of magic you see in fantasy Disney movies. I can only describe it by recounting what it looked like to me - I would click on Show more and the installer would reveal what it's doing: feverishly unpacking various files that would later work together to bring me immersive experiences. The list of processes going ratatata was truly fulfilling to watch. It felt like something was being built, each little step bringing me closer to playing a new game. Perhaps, it would be odd to say that I find it a bit inspirational. But hear me out, that's how reaching your targets work. You keep chipping away on a TODO list until it's no more. That's how science works. Each scientist iteratively adds on the work of his priors and slowly builds our understanding of the world. We might not be machines to work non-stop on our tasks but the fact remains that small steps add up.

What I'm doing now and my current goals

My main stuff

I'm currently learning Web Development, Data Structures & Algorithms and DBMS from my Degree.

What I'm doing on the side

I'm supplementing my learning of DSA with the books Introduction to Algorithms, by Thomas H. Cormen, Charles E. Leiserson, Ronald L. Rivest and Clifford Stein and Algorithm Design, by Jon Kleinberg and Evá Tardos. Similarly, for Web Dev, I'm following ZTM's Web Development course on Udemy and practicing on freecodecamp.org. With DBMS, I'm referring to the book Database System Concepts by Abraham Silberschatz , Henry F. Korth and S. Sudarshan and intend to follow ZTM's DBMS course on Udemy.

Side-side hustles

I'm also following ZTM's python course on the side (I swear, I wasn't sponsored by them :P), so that I can do a few guided projects. I also intend to follow this road map to fill in gaps in my knowledge. I also intend to strengthen my mathematical foundations with the books Mathematics for Machine Learning by Deisenroth, A. Aldo Faisal, and Cheng Soon Ong and Probability and Statistics with Examples using R with Deepayan Sarkar and Steve Tanner. I don't know if I'll be able to do all of this and I don't expect to either - if I'm able to follow through with even a pinch of this stuff, I've still learned a lot.

What I intend to do

I want to start building projects to actually get into development. I also want to slowly get into competitive coding to spruce up my resume. Networking on LinkedIn and maintaining an active digital profile would be a huge benefit to me. Once I get a hang of things, I hope to contribute to open source.

Down the line, I hope this blog will give me a great understanding of how I've grown as a person. It's always a powerful feeling to truly grasp the magnitude of how much you have changed. When I started writing this post, I wasn't expecting it to become this big. I was expecting to write something on the lines of Hello, I don't know what write here, so uhh... bye!. I'm yet to build my first project and I can't wait to learn all the stuff I need to make one by the time the inspiration for one strikes. Later on (hopefully with lots of projects under my belt), I wonder how I will look at this post; Maybe I'll gawk at the writing? Will I find it obtusely saccharine and sentimental? Or will I be thankful for planting a seed that grew into a great tree? Only time will tell. Until then-

print("Adios")