From combat to boxing to programming I've learned one thing: be intentional in your training.
— Jerome Hardaway 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 (@JeromeHardaway) July 20, 2021
I come back to that tweet from Jerome Hardaway (twitter) and how that is the motivation to start this HashNode blog.
- Declare current intentions
- Start writing about those intentions to keep that motivation
Intentions
JSNAD Certification
In the short term, I am focused on studying and preparing for the OpenJS Node.js Application Developer Certification
Why?
I started my development career in Node.js and it's been where a majority of my focus has been since. That said, for myself, I would like some external validation that says, "Yeah, you know about this set of material with respect to Node.js".
That validation helps enforce my belief that I am progressing as a developer.
Back to intentions, focus on areas that I want to grow in.
Grow in Node.js, Go, GraphQL and Python
Node.js
I started my career in Node.js and it's been very fulfilling thus far. The area that I am currently focused on, platforms for web applications, has allowed me to continue to learn and grow in Node.js, and ECMAScript in general.
That said, as I look at roles out there related to Node.js, they often couple Node.js experience with React.js, and honestly, development on the Client-side is not alive for me. I am more interested in the performance of the platform, the "plumbing" of what the Client facing applications are built on than the Client applications themselves.
Go
That leads me to want to learn Go.
In my current role, I had to learn Go in order to build a few components that needed parity throughout our stack of Node.js and Go. It was a paradigm shift! It was fascinating to learn the syntax and support building the services that the Node.js applications were calling via gRPC.
In regard to career growth, having this experience I envision will open more doors towards backend development.
When I search for backend roles, I am often seeing a want for experience in Go. Where this differs from my search for Node.js backend roles is that there is not a coupling of Go with some clientside frameworks like React.js.
My intuition is that learning Go will open my mind and opportunities to roles in a space that I find intrinsically interesting.
GraphQL
I started learning GraphQL in 2019 as I transitioned from the Node.js Platform team of the company I was working at at the time to the newly formed GraphQL team, migrating the company onto using Apollo's GraphQL suite (back at apollo v1), it's followed me every since in some form or another.
At the current company where I work, it was the main focus of my first few months, standing up the company's GraphQL Gateway and collecting learnings along the way.
What I enjoy about GraphQL is that it is language agnostic, though often associated with JavaScript/TypeScript. So that pairs nicely with my pursuit of learning a couple of different languages.
Python
This is the most recent intention and rounds out my overall focus for the short to mid-term.
My want of learning python is loosely on expanding my horizons but primarily stems from having to learn Python to solve the problem sets in Google's foo.bar program.
I would like to expose myself to different ways of doing things.
Recapitulate
From combat to boxing to programming I've learned one thing: be intentional in your training.
— Jerome Hardaway 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 (@JeromeHardaway) July 20, 2021
I feel a sense of ease and focus in listing out for myself (and now y'all!) my intentions in regard to software development and technical growth.
I plan to focus my writings here on HashNode to these areas and I aspire that it will allow some great conversations and learnings from the greater software development community.
I am excited about what is to come!
Cover Photo by Sapan Patel on Unsplash