Reflecting on My DevAdvent 2022 Experience: Insights and Lessons
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Chapter 1: A New Approach to DevAdvent
As the holiday season concluded, I found myself reflecting on my second DevAdvent experience. It was essential to evaluate how the event unfolded, what strategies worked well, and where improvements could be made to avoid repeating last year's mistakes.
This time, I opted for a modified approach to the initiative. Unlike my first DevAdvent, where I published a post daily starting December 1st, I limited my writing to weekdays (Monday to Friday). Moreover, I didn't adhere to a pre-set schedule of challenges; instead, I selected problems daily from those available on CodeWars.
To enhance my language skills, I made the choice to compose all my posts in English. This decision was driven by my desire to improve my proficiency, and I believe I made significant progress in that regard. Overall, this flexible approach allowed me to tackle the challenges with a more relaxed mindset. During this DevAdvent, I successfully solved 17 problems, compared to 24 last year, and wrote 17 posts, just one less than the previous year. I'm quite pleased with both my solutions and the content I generated.
Additionally, I experimented with two AI tools: Lexica Art for generating images to complement my narratives and ChatGPT to evaluate its effectiveness in solving programming challenges. So far, the results have been promising.
Section 1.1: Challenges Faced
Despite the positive aspects, there were notable drawbacks compared to last year. Primarily, participating in this contest solo lacked the excitement of collaborating with fellow developers through a shared schedule. I missed the opportunity to explore others' solutions and draw comparisons.
Furthermore, I underestimated the value of a sequential calendar featuring exercises that progressively increase in difficulty. While CodeWars does offer challenges from easier to more complex, they are not organized in a cohesive manner. Last year’s problems had a better connection, which aided in my learning experience.
Subsection 1.1.1: Looking Ahead
Reflecting on my past, I noticed that after last year's DevAdvent, I continued writing into January and part of February, but my output dwindled throughout the year. This year, my goal is to establish a more consistent routine with programming exercises and writing. I believe maintaining a similar format—posting 2 or 3 times a week on various programming problems—will help. Additionally, I plan to write one post weekly focusing on artificial intelligence topics.
In conclusion, I appreciate your support throughout my DevAdvent 2022 journey. Thank you for reading, and stay tuned for more insights and updates.
For more engaging content on coding challenges, check out "Let's Code Codewars - Codewars Challenges #1" on YouTube.
Also, don't miss "#100Devs - Let's Practice Problem Solving with Codewars!" for additional problem-solving strategies.