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Sharing my experiences from the year 2017, life and being optimistic about the year 2018 and beyond.

Last year, around this time, I was lost. I didn’t know where I was going with my life. I used to think a lot about future, I used to dream that once I finish my education, I will be doing a lot of amazing things, that I would be starting my own business and living life on my own and helping others reach where I would be, but the reality as every kid may have experienced when they enter high school or college is that they’re not fit for this system. Part of the reason why they’re not fit for a system is that the system itself is not modeled after each student’s individual and infinitely unique needs. It’s not possible. I knew the education system isn’t going to work out for me.

By that time, I was 17, and I was making small games, level design and occasionally I would do some 3D rendering and graphics work.

This was not new to me, I was learning to make games ever since I was 14 or so, learning basics of Unity3D, learning considerable 3D modelling using Blender3D so that I can use t

he models in my games and finally discovering ROBLOX which was one of the nicest places I’ve been to learn, play and to share our imagination to the world beyond.

A few months in, I wanted to move away from game development after my game did not work out and I was not mentally prepared for it. I could not continue making games on ROBLOX and so I started working on Javascript, and then I found out about FreeCodeCamp, while I was slowly going ahead with FCC, I came across Chingu Cohorts. Each and every one of these communities have helped me learn something new, from blog posts of success and shared experience to long interactions I used to have with the members of these communities, they helped me shape the way I think and perceive the world around me. It was amazing year for me, even if I lost 2 good friends because of various reasons. I met an amazing person who took me into the world of Life Is Strange, an amazing game that really opened my eyes on things like the value of time, teenage and friends. Soon after that, I broke out with that dear friend and it was very hard. I did however learn quite a lot from this experience, I now realize how important building trust and strong relationships with people who care about you, and whom you care about is.

It is almost a year since I dropped out of high school to pursue things I care about the most in life. It was hard, discouraging and very spiky terrain to travel, both emotionally and mentally. Over the year, I was able to get enough knowledge about Javascript, CSS, and frameworks like ReactJS to apply for jobs. Now I’m 18, I am remotely working as a Full stack developer at Oyez.fr, a french web design firm. I’m really excited that my little amount of knowledge can help digitize stores across the world!

Getting hired to get paid was one of the best things to happen in my life so far. I am optimistic that it is just one of the steps to a better future. My parents finally seem to be satisfied, as now I can show them that I am earning money and they have the confidence that I am not going the wrong path. While they still ask me to continue studying, I think I’m boldly set to take the uneven path, and I will accept what my heart says and move forward.

I’ll put together a list of few things I’ve learned this year, most of which I’ve learned either by working on projects or by looking at other’s code / documentation or the source code when it comes to libraries.

Things I’ve learned this year

• ES6, Typescript
• Babel, Webpack, Gulp, ReactJS, Basics of Angular and Vue to compare with React.
• NodeJS, GraphQL (!! ❤), Redux, React Router, Express
• mySQL (!), MongoDB, Getting more and more familiar with Mongoose and MVC architecture
• Firebase was not satisfying 🙁 but firestore seems to be, I might check it next year :3
• Read more books, read more insights from great minds
• Trust and strong relations are important
• TDD FTW!
• It’s amazing how far we’ve come as a species
• Consistency and Time management are important.
• Exercise exercise exercise!
• Write more diary (the number of entries doubled this year! which is amazing! ❤), try to share your thoughts via Medium or a blog. More importantly, engage in conversations and participate more in events
• JS ecosystem is pretty fat, don’t worry about the fatigue, worry only about short term goals, while considering the long term goals.
• If you can’t control your emotions, you’re breaking your life.
• And again — Soft skills matter

So far this is the most productive year yet for me. Over the course of the year, I did learn quite a lot of things and there are things that I haven’t yet worked up to. 2017 is past now.