My Quarantine Challenges: Writing, Programming and Google CodeJam

While snooping around the various discord servers like I usually do, I came across this post by @anomadsoul which is an initiative to set some challenges for yourself to accomplish during this quarantine.

I had stopped writing altogether during the last 1 year due to some personal reasons and mostly also because I just couldn't find the time. I started college in August 2018, and life has been very hectic ever since. The multitude of assignments, projects, and tests always left me burnt out at the end of the day.

During this lockdown, I have found myself with plenty of time to get back to writing again and the timing couldn't have been better. With the advent of hive and my new found free time, I can finally start to write again like I used to when steem was at its peak glory.

Life During Lockdown

India is supposed to be on a total lockdown till 14th April, but given the current scenario, chances are high that the lockdown will be extended. It is almost like an overused joke by now, but given the fact that I am introverted, I am loving the isolated life.

My college is on hold, internships have been cancelled and I am back home with my family. I am the kind of guy who likes to stay in and read a book and relax instead of going out to have "fun" like much of my friends which is why I am enjoying this "me" time.

During the start of the lockdown, I had already decided that I will not waste this time and catch up on stuff that I had always wanted to do. Recently, I missed the deadline for an application for Google Summer of Code, which I had been planning from this January but due to lack of practice and inexperience with open-source, I missed the opportunity and I still regret it.

Which is why I am doubling down on my efforts to reach my goals this time.

These are the goals that I aim to accomplish during this lockdown --

Write a post daily on hive for the next 2 weeks

Apart from @anomadsoul's initiative, I am doing this also because of @sidwrites. Every time I talk to the guy, I get insanely motivated to write more. It was him who first challenged me to do this, although the terms were slightly different - 2 posts a day which is a huge task for me. But I am positive I can do atleast 1 post a day. Baby steps.

The reason behind choosing a small time frame is to make it seem more achievable. Usually what happens is we get hyped up and work hard for a few days and then the initial motivation and excitement dies down and we end up stop working toward them indefinitely.

I will try my best to commit to writing one post daily without compromising on the quality of the posts. Depending on how the next 2 weeks go, I might extend it to keep motivating myself to write more.

Get Better At Web Development

If you have been reading my previous posts, you know that I have been building a website and posting my progress whenever I can. The links are gonna be at the end of this post so please check them out.

My goal with web development is to finally being able to build a dapp sometime in the near future. Right now I don't have any ideas as to what I should build and at the same time, I also lack the technical knowledge to work with the blockchain.

So what I am going to do is get better at the MERN stack and JavaScript by building a lot of smaller projects.

Increase My C++ And Problem Solving Skills

I want to get better at C++. I learned C++ during my last semester in college but I am not as good at it as I would like myself to be. If mastered, C++ can be a very powerful tool in problem solving and coding competitions which bring me to my third goal.

Qualify For Atleast Round 3 Of Google Code Jam

At this point you might be thinking that I have some kind of a weird fascination with Google. Being the largest tech company in the world, Google is a dream company for many computer science students and I am no exception.

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The qualifier for Google Code Jam was yesterday and I am please to announce to you guys that I have qualified since I managed to earn 42 points after coding for almost 8 hours. And right now my global rank is 23439(the 9 was hidden which I didn't realise at first) out of 30,000 other contestants that qualified.

There are 3 rounds before the grand finale and those who reach atleast round 3 are given a Google T-shirt which comes with the ability to brag about it in college. There are 3 chances for clearing round 1 and a total of 4500 contestants qualify for round 2 and from there 1000 contestants qualify for round 3.

The qualifier for round 2 is on May 16 2020, 14:00 UTC, hopefully, with enough practice I make it to round 3 and even if I don't it will be a great learning opportunity.

A special thanks to @anomadsoul for this initiative and to @blocktrades for supporting this challenge.

What are your goals and challenges?
Comment down below.