I previously uploaded this post to my Medium profile but figured this might be a better audience for encouragement and accountability.

Over the last 4 years, I have flirted with web development constantly. I chipped away at FreeCodeCamp’s Responsive Web Design Certification, paid for two full years of CodeCademy Pro, thought about signing up for Treehouse.

I even had a mid-COVID-19 quarantine crisis and enrolled in a Data Science Bootcamp at General Assembly. The bootcamp was hell. I lasted 6 weeks before admitting that I was not remotely prepared to use Statistics, Python, Pandas, and the fundamentals of Machine Learning in a paid position– full-time. I panicked, dropped out, and continued clicking through the mountains of modules at FreeCodeCamp.

Then I found The Odin Project.

The Odin Project (TOP) seemed too good to be true. It was FREE, self-paced, gave access to live support through Discord, and required students to set up an integrated development environment (IDE). It was absolutely packed with outside resources which meant that it was designed for genuine engagement and self-discovery. And most importantly (to me), it required students to begin using the CLI immediately. TOP was the only truly robust, free program that taught students how to code as they would IRL. Without sandboxes.

I read a few reviews and decided to start off with the Full Stack Ruby on Rails track. I’m one week in and still (re)reviewing the fundamentals of HTML and CSS. Only this time I actually feel like I’m learning– AND remembering things!

I wrote this post as a “hello world” to introduce my personal web development journey. I mostly plan to use it as a space to write tutorials for myself, share things that I find interesting/useful, and hold myself accountable in making real progress.

Ideally, I would like to complete TOP in its entirety within a year. However, if I don’t complete it at that pace I’m not going to beat myself up.

This time I'm committed to making consistent progress, and I'm looking to find encouragement and guidance along the way.