My Journey Through the 100 Days of Code Course
Click here to navigate to my GitHub account where coding projects were uploaded. All projects part of this course have 100DaysofCode in the name.
Click here to navigate to the portfolio website I created as part of the course. The website has my reflections and thoughts on the 19 portfolio projects that were completed.
December 2020 – June 2023 Starting and Life’s Twists and Turns
I had initially started the 100 Days of Code Course, by the AppBrewery, around December of 2020. At that time, I was working as an IT Technician for the Washoe County School District and was interested in pursuing something new to learn. In my college work, I did have a Python course that I completed and felt like Python would be a great skill to expand upon. When I initially attempted this course, I made it to day 25 of the content. I would say the content was challenging but I was able to understand most of the concepts.
I did have plans to make it through the entire course. Ultimately… I decided to put a pause on this course and pursue completing an IT certification that I had a voucher for. With the voucher expiring, my focus needed to be shifted to completing that.
Shortly after, in July of 2021, I started a new position working with the state of Nevada. That position required me to focus on completing other IT certifications and courses to maintain my jobs requirements.
Fast forward to November of 2021, I returned to a new position with my previous employer, the Washoe County School District, and that also was a solid commitment as far as my learning time went. Determined to move up the IT ranks, I decided to put my focus on completing a few mid-level and advanced certifications to bolster my Resume.
In 2023, I was finally able to land a role with the University of Nevada that I feel was a step in the right direction. After starting my position with the University, I was able to finally achieve my goal of obtaining an Advanced/Professional level IT certification. That left me with the question of where to go from there? … I did not see any point in pursuing additional certifications unless they were required by a job. As an avid learner, I knew I had to pick something up and grow my knowledge…
July 2023 – December 2023 Progressing Forward
After completing my advanced level certification, I thought of a few avenues I could pursue. Honestly, Python was one of the top if not the one on the top of my list of subjects I wanted to tap into.
I looked back at the progress I made on the 100 Days of Code course and thought to myself that I would be easy to jump back into the subject even though it had been about two and a half years since I last looked at Python code. I restarted my progress on the course and made it to about days 8 and 9 and thought to myself that I may need to revisit the fundamentals before proceeding with further lessons. Especially if it is my goal to absorb the knowledge and be challenged vs. copying the code that I was seeing on the screen.
My solution to this was to take other courses on Udemy. The courses I took on Udemy were “Python: From Zero to Hero” and “Automate the Boring Stuff”. Of the two courses, I would say that the most helpful one was the Zero to Hero course. That course really focused on hammering in the fundamentals. The Automate the Boring Stuff course was also helpful in introducing me to concepts not covered in the other course.
Having strengthened my foundational knowledge, I had decided it was time to return to the 100 Days of Code Course. My progress on this course resumed in September. By the end of September, I had finally reached where I previously left off (day 25). I spent a good amount of time chugging through the course work in October, November and December ultimately arriving at the portfolio projects of the 100 Days of Code course.
Crossing the Finish Line 🏁
After taking the other courses to strengthen my knowledge. This course did not feel as if it was moving too fast for me compared to when I initially restarted the course in July of 2023.
Overall, it was a fun experience. There were some challenging portions in the course that did require me doing a bit of extra work and reflection to make sure I understood the concepts being covered. Especially when it came to the data science portion of the course. This sadly, also reminded me that I should brush up on my math skills 😅. Of all the content that was covered, I would say the sections I enjoyed the most were the sections on using Flask and interacting with APIs.
Here is a list of the projects you can find on my GitHub account pertaining to this course:
- Morse Code Translator (CLI Application)
- HTML Portfolio Website
- Tic Tac Toe Game (CLI Game)
- Watermarking App (Tkinter)
- Typing Speed App (Tkinter)
- Breakout Game Clone (Turtle Graphics)
- Cafe List Website (Flask Web App)
- To Do List Website (Flask Web App)
- Disappearing Text Writing App (Tkinter)
- PDF to Audiofile Converter (Using AWS Poly & api.voicerss.org)
- Color Pallet Generator (Flask Web App)
- Custom Web Scraper (Scheduled Web Scraping and Email)
- Google Dinosaur Bot Automation (Pillow and PyAutoGui)
- Space Invadors Clone (Turtle Graphics)
- API Website (Flask Web App)
- Online Shop Website (Flask Web App)
- Custom Automation (Scheduled Webscraping and Email)
- Space Race Visualization (Google Colab Notebook)
- Police Death Analization (Google Colab Notebook)
This was a fun experience, and I would absolutely recommend this course to anyone!