Hey there!
Welcome to my Blog! I am Jamil (pronounced j-uh-m-ee-l). I am a MERN Full-Stack Web Developer. I have two cats, Ed & Al. They're 4 years old and they're my whole world. To be honest, they're the driving force for most of my work.
Alt text: Ed sitting on the couch.
Alt text: Al sitting on my PC.
Who am I?
I am an immigrant. I moved to Canada with my family in 2004. It was not an easy journey. Uprooting yourself at the age of 10 and moving to Canada with next to no notice from your parents was not an easy thing to go through. I remember us complaining to our parents for the entire summer prior to us immigrating about how we wanted to go on vacation, little did we know our flight would be a long one and one with no return tickets.
We moved to Canada where I later grew up and attended Dalhousie University to attain degrees in Chemical and Industrial Engineering. I started off my career as a Project Manager for a large tech organization. I learned very quickly that I wanted to transition into tech. See, growing up I was always into computers. Around the age of 8, I attended a camp where they taught us the different hardware components in computers, and to "pass" the course (it was just a skills test) you had to build a pc from the components they provided you. I later grew up to be the point of advice for all my friends who wanted to build their own gaming PCs.
In University, I learned how to code in VBA, C++, and Python. I didn't really get a full grasp of what was going on in school and had trouble understanding the basic concepts, but was introduced to variable declarations/assignments, conditionals, and loops. See the methods used in school didn't really work well for me and I didn't end up doing too great. I had no drive to dive into the code and learn any of the concepts. There were many reasons that I didn't do well in school, but I won't dive into them. All I want to note from that is the bad grades in school didn't stop me from being relatively successful (to my own definition of success), it just made my path to get there longer.
In December of 2021, I came across a Reddit post made by Leon Noel on the r/learnprogramming subreddit, and Leon was hosting a free opportunity to learn HTML, CSS, and JS. The requirements were simple, all you had to do was sign up, attend, and do the homework. Consistently.
Here I was with the opportunity to change my career again and I decided to jump right on it. This was not an easy task. It cost me a lot of 6time. I spent hours every day completing my Anki decks, Codewars problems, and pushing code to GitHub. It was a consistent daily effort.
Alt text: Anki filled in squares dated from January 11, 2022 to September 11, 2022.
Alt text: Codewars completed katas as of September 11, 2022.
Alt text: GitHub profile commits as of September 11, 2022.
I'm glad to have committed to 100Devs though. The experience has changed my life. The pandemic has not been easy, but I am here making the most of what I have. I'm glad to have built a community within 100Devs. I can honestly say, I couldn't have done this alone. I am 100% community-taught.
What Brings Me Here?
So, why am I on Hashnode? Well, ultimately, I want to become a content creator. I want to document my journey and share my knowledge, successes, and learning opportunities. I am attempting to dip my toes in first by writing blogs before transitioning into video content.
I also have an ulterior motive for all this. I want to be able to communicate my thoughts well, or in a clearer fashion. Breaking into tech is hard. There is a lot of dry content that you have to go through and concepts you have to bridge to understand the whole environment. It's overwhelming, and it doesn't come easy to a lot of people. I want an attempt at lowering that barrier to entry. Simplifying ideas will also help me wrap my head around tough concepts which will give me a better understanding of said concepts.
See, I believe those who are capable of immersing themselves in tech, should. I am a firm believer that technology can be incorporated into people's lives in a positive manner to improve their quality of life.
As I break into the world of independent contracting and I look for a full-time position in tech, I will be documenting my journey to the best of my ability to give people my perspective. I intend to transition into the gig economy on a full-time basis long term as I find more evergreen clients. I will also start exploring methods to generate income from content creation while maintaining the authenticity of my character.
Finally, I want to take every opportunity to advocate for accessibility in tech. My immediate plan is to start learning about the WCAG standards and building my projects up to those standards. I also want to be more active on social media and build a community. I want to learn from others and listen to their experiences and have an opportunity to share mine. So if you've read this far, thank you.
What Do My Days Look Like Now?
These days I keep busy with the 100Devs agency work, my client work, and my 9-5. My days are fairly busy. I also like to work out 4 times a week. I post my routines on my website. I am a big advocate of stepping away from your computer after a coding session and either taking a walk or performing an activity. It'll help with the retention of information. I might make a blog post on how I go about studying, and what works for me.
I have so much I would like to talk about, but I am bad at organizing blogs. I attempted blogging earlier this year by writing something down every day, but ended up burning myself out. My lack of planning makes it hard for me to incorporate all the details that I would like to share in a blog post, but I guess that's what the second and third drafts are all about.
As I learn I will share, but if you have any suggestions, please feel free to reach out! I would love to hear about how you would prepare for a blog.
Follow me on my social media!