Introduction

hi folks, I am anuj . A boy who was put into mechanical engineering and who Is trying to go with his passion rather than the system. This blog is all about how I got interested in and my journey. I will be sharing a bit of my history, then I will talk about the start of 2022, my post-college life and how i found my interest.

If you like to know my journey do give it a read.

History

From the beginning my middle school (6th grade) I was interested in technology, the movie of hacker will make me goosebumps back then, I used to think about how can they do that, soo awesome. and always think. It's not possible for me, well you can't blame me for that, back then there was very less hype about social networking and the internet was very costly on top of that I was a kid, for me. my parents saved some money and buy me a sony Vaio laptop, but no one was technologically sound to teach me its usage. and I just used it to play games. fast forward to my high school(11- 12th grade), as I don't have much exposure to computer programming, just an interest. I was told to take mechanical engineering, due to pressure from relatives and as my parents - are not much educated in this field they get influenced by them -, as this (mechanical) branch /field has scope...

In my college days as I was not been able to connect with the topic of my field. I just study and pass the exam. and through the internet, I got to know about technologies like AI/ML, I got interested and started watching conferences on youtube, learning about python and then doing some projects like linear regression, classification, and logistic regression. implemented a basic neural network connection for a few projects in Keras. but all is done by watching tutorials, and they are all done in Kaggle, I have also learned basic HTML, and CSS so I can make a webpage quite easily.

My peers are all into competitive programming and web development. there was no knowledge of the cloud or AI. So I didn't get help from them.

Start of 2022

This year companies have started to come and discriminated based on non-CS branch students applying for their company, in a software role. I have applied for a few, rejected by a few for the interview round, technical round, and HR round, and at that time there was a company that treated me like I was in so much need of a job, and they can treat me any way they want as they are giving me a job and i am obliged with them. and after that incident, I talked to a few of my friends and they all experienced the same thing. then I got to know how messed up the recruitment process is in our country, with no empathy. I got very disappointed by them.

and just like that my college days were over in the months of May, and I don't get placed.

In the last two months, I have met Kunal Kushwaha online on youtube, saw his profile and got impressed by him. After spending time understanding what causes him to get success I was blown away. So I thought it is possible for me too. and at that time I got introduced to the world of OPENSOURCE.

Well after that I was not disheartened that I don't get placed and I was a bit happy that I got a path towards success, which is a lack of discrimination, and which has a nice community for newcomers.

Post-college journey of discovery and growth

SO It's the month of June I returned home. At this time I started my journey of exploration. As I have got to know about communities like eddieHub and comm-classroom. and got to know there are different fields which people choose like, development, DevOps (cloud) or AI/ML.

As I have worked a bit with AI/ML, I know that I want to do something more core based. i.e I like to know how a computer works, how to build software, etc.

So I have started with development or more precisely reactJS. so I have downloaded a few tutorials from freecodecamp and started copying the code from the tutorial and I don't understand how he does this. And hence I got stuck in tutorial hell.

my first open-source contribution

As I was very new to this open-source and online community thing. I was just watching the talks going on, in discord. and I don't have technical knowledge related to that so I just watched them talk, and don't participate in it. I have got to know that Eddie Joude has started an initiative long before, in it you can do your first open-source contribution by submitting a PR to join eddihub . And it has soo detailed step-by-step manual that I was able to do and I have done my first open-source contribution from Eddiehub. I feel privileged to meet such amazing community members.

But after that first contribution, I shared my learning on Twitter. That's it, I was long submerged in tutorial hell.

for those who don't know what tutorial hell is. In this, you just watch the tutorial and you will feel that you are learning in reality you are not learning you just copy-paste the code from the tutorial. without a tutorial as support, you can't type anything.

Navigating the Storm: My Story of Grief, Healing and Hope

It was the month of July, and I got to know that my nani (maternal grandmother) health is very bad, so I got to my nani's home and stayed with her. but in the last week of July month, she passed away. It was very devastating for me, and I left all my studies. in India after a person's death, the death ritual is performed and it goes on for 13 days. so in the month of September, I returned home. and slowly and steadily I was coming to terms with it. and started to get on my track.

at that time I realized that what I was doing is worthless, and I was stuck in tutorial hell for one month.

I got to know about the tutorial hell that people faced. and then I stopped watching tutorials

The Journey begins

In this month of October, i have started learning about containers, and images. learned a lot of dockers fundamentals. It is the month when I started working with CLI (command line interface). I have built many containers and images. and whenever I turn on my laptop almost daily, I always type commands to see images and build containers out of images. and just like a child who got something interesting to play with, i always play with containers. It is also the month where I participated in my Octoberfest.

My first hactoberfest

I was very new to GitHub and i can't able to find a project to contribute to, and on top of it, I hear lots of cases where the repo was malpractices. hence after lots of searching, I was able to contribute in docker participation certificate and

app write participation certificate.

and as I was not being able to find an open-source project to contribute to, and the main reason for that is I don't like development much, and I was afraid to start my cloud learning. So I just read the docker from the documentation. And learned all about containers and VMs, and practiced hands-on docker. In this month of October, i have started learning about concepts of System design and started sharing the content in form of a miniblog on Twitter as tweets or threads. Just like that October ends.

It is the month of November, and after doing some hands-on docker-like image creation and spinning up containers from images, working with public and private images. I got to learn about the need for container orchestration, and I choose Kubernetes over docker swam. There is no particular region for that just i get inspired by kunal kushwaha. And started learning about Kubernetes (k8s) from a book named `Cloud Native DevOps with Kubernetes` and learned all the fundamental infrastructure of k8s and installed microk8s and minikube and worked with some k8s stuff.

At first installation for microk8s was tough. And at that time I was getting active in kubesimplify community run by Satyam Pathak. also I got to know him from kunal only. and started engaging in their discord, I got a bit of motivation to study the backend, so I created a simple email-sending web app using nodeJS and nodemailer Github link, and I have written my first blog for this project in hashNode HashNode link. Just like that month of November get over

Officially Started learning cloud and infrastructure

well, this is the rise of December and I got explored all the domains ML in my college, web development after my college, and infrastructure while learning System design and docker and k8s. well, I now got to know that it's finally time to choose a field. And I have decided to go with infrastructure and cloud learning. After getting fascinated by distributed systems. I have decided to write blog series in hashNode on Exploring the world of System Design: A Practical Guide for Scaling. but I have just been able to write 1 blog post on it. I am always nonconsistent related to my learning. But I have read very much from lots of people on Twitter about the power of consistency. And decided to be consistent in writing blogs. So I was only able to write a single blog on it and will be updating it as I continue to learn and get time to post. The first post in this series was on How Single Server Architecture Works.

I have tried to see how to contribute to open-source projects related to cloud and infrastructure. but they all use a language that I don't know about (GOlang), so I have decided to learn to go from a book, but it was very long about 1000 pages so in midway I decided to stop as I was not able to contain knowledge. and at that time I came to a video on golang from tech with nana, on youtube. so I decided to watch that video and after watching the video I have decided to implement all my knowledge in creating a simple CLI-ticket-booking-app.

This month only I got to know about Saiyam Pathak's DevOps roadmap. and decided to create my learning on Cloud and Infrastructure.

This creation of the repository and posting it on Twitter was my official announcement on the community that I have decided to learn and share, and also shared that folks like to get engaged in the repository to learn with me. because it sometimes gets tough to maintain consistency while doing alone and no one is there to see your work, So it's a good way to learn together and get motivated by others.

Conclusion

This is the wrap-up of my journey in 2022. In summary My journey was like sailing in the ocean alone, navigating through uncharted waters and facing numerous obstacles. But at last, I found the right ship to embark on, a vessel that would take me to my destination. I am grateful to all those who shouted loudly, guiding me toward the right ship that would take me to my destination. Their encouragement and support helped me find my way and stay focused on my journey. I would not have been able to reach my goals without their help, and I will always be thankful for their guidance.

A bit of an overview of my 2023 plans. I am going to complete the roadmap as soon as possible. I am sharing my cloud learning in this repository if you want to contribute or learn with me check this out.

Hope you got to learn something from my journey. And this year I got to know 1 thing tech is for everybody, irrespective of their background. You just have to follow the global community if your local community is not helping.

Thank you for giving your's time to read this blog.