I am not gonna lie, this challenge was tough. Some times over the last 30 days, things got hairy. But here I am, on the last day!

For the 30th day, I completed a list page that references all the projects I built over the past month.

What I Learned From The Last 30 Days

Coding every day reminded me of what I don't know.

This isn't to harp on imposter syndrome, but rather, this experience helped to prioritize the skills I needed to hone and focus on. For example, I discovered the BEM naming convention and I look forward to applying it to HTML and CSS. Let me know if there is another naming convention I should look into!

I got over my perfectionism complex.

Over the past six months, I started and restarted multiple projects but never finished them. I would get caught in the details and feel overwhelmed (INFP struggles) and my projects would go unfinished. The timing and limitations of this challenge actually motivated me to finish my projects and ship them, regardless of how pretty or well-coded they are. Most importantly, I learned to focus on functionality and calculate a realistic scope for each project.

I looked for help when I needed it.

I found a wonderful community with Frontendmentor.io and was able to get feedback on my projects through their Slack channel. I also got some feedback on my project here on Dev.to and I am happy to see how I was able to help some of you as well!

One/two/three days is not enough to build an MVP.

I started building a full stack app and realized that it needed more focus past the 30 days. Though I completed some component projects for this app that applied to this challenge, I don't think it was a good time to run parallel with building a full MVP.

I learned to take care of myself.

This challenge was the perfect setting for establishing a routine with programming. My life has changed quite a bit over the past year and I had been struggling with adapting to the big changes in my life. During the past months, all I was doing were job applications, coding challenges for companies and practicing algorithms. It was stressful!

Since I purposely stopped doing interviews during this time, I was able to take more control of my schedule to build a routine of working out, being creative and having fun! I also realized how important it is to take time to do nothing!

What Now?

There are quite a few things to take on after this challenge. During the first week of this challenge, I was in the middle of an interview process with a company (didn't get it) and I realized that I would not be able to do this challenge if I kept interviewing so I paused my job search. Now that the challenge is finished, I will be picking up job applications again.

It was nice to practice HTML and CSS, I feel like I got well-practiced in setting up webpages. But it would be more beneficial for my goals as a developer to pursue a challenge that builds robust and complex applications. I have a half built MVP from this challenge that I would like to complete and perhaps rollover to an MVP challenge! I am considering elongating the development time and creating MVPs instead of smaller components.

Should You Try It?

If you have hung on to this post until the end, I would like to encourage you to give this challenge a shot! I was a longtime lurker on Dev and wrote my first post regarding this challenge. Now I have written 31 posts, in addition to having built some things! Most of all I learned a lot about myself and my dev potential with a better sense of direction in my programming skills.

Check out Florin Pop's list of projects and his own 100 projects in 100 days challenge which inspired me. Frontend Mentor has some seriously beautiful projects to put on your portfolio as well.

Stay tuned for what type of challenge I come up with next!