My Second year in Tech

Exactly one year back from now, I published a blog where I shared my First year of Tech journey. In that blog, I’ve mentioned about how I got started, and balanced both development and DSA, while maintaining a consistent 9+ CGPA throughout the semesters. Also, I shared how I got my breakthrough in freelancing and how I attended multiple hackathons and won all of them! If you haven’t read that blog, I would request you to read it from here.

Now, let’s talk about how much I progressed in the past one year, and see if I was able to meet my own expectations or plans that I had made for this year 👀, previously mentioned at the end of my last tech journey blog!

The Journey

November, 2023

As you have seen in my last tech-journey blog, the month of October was super productive for me, and that streak continued in November too. I managed to cross the 200+ problems mark on Leetcode and started doing Leetcode consistently. My goal was to solve at least one problem a day, and I made a routine for that,- whenever I’m opening my PC for the first time in a day, my target was to solve a single Leetcode problem at first and then move onto some other tasks!

By the end of this month, I started participating in the Weekly Leetcode contests. This was among one of my to-do things from the first year of my journey!

Alongside this, I was working on building a CRUD application called “Toile”, whose major purpose was to showcase my designing skill, alongside a functional backend.

December, 2023

Completed the work on Toile! It took around a month to make it fully ready. But it turned out to be pretty good. You can check it out from here: https://toile.vercel.app

I started learning Dynamic Programming, because I noticed that there were a lot of questions coming from that during the contests. Also, I continued that habit of solving DSA problems regularly and managed to cross the 300+ mark of solving Leetcode problems. And, as I’ve solved all the Daily Problems of this month, I earned a badge for that.

And most importantly, I got the opportunity at Keploy to work as a Community Evangelist. As a part of that role, I took an online session on “API Testing”, which went really really well, and also this was one of first talks to such a large audience! Additionally, I contributed to Keploy’s website and docs and helped them squash some bugs!

Also, I ended this month with an amazing event DevFest Kolkata ‘24, where I learned about some new topics like Kotlin Multi-Platform, and was able to have a chat with multiple startup founders like Sakeet Thadad, Aloke Majumder from Hoichoi, Lakshya Mittal and got to experience an QnA session from Striver himself!

Additionally, I designed a GitHub stats tracker, and as a part of that, I created a GitHub Wrap for myself!

January, 2024

The year started with a bang! In the past few months, my freelancing was running a bit dry. But with the start of this year, I got two big projects from two different clients. One of them was a research-based technical writing and the other one was making the Career, Showcase and some other web pages for a small start-up!

And, I maintained my consistency of solving DSA problems regularly and I was able to get the DPP Badge for this month too!

February, 2024

The month started with a small contractual work for re-designing the UI of a start-up named Wizdom. So, there were a lot of revisions and talking extensively with the teams. As I was alone in the project, it was pretty exhilarating but I was able to deliver the task within two weeks. Although I’ve done UI/UX designing gigs before, but this was a bit different because it was a fully-working start-up rather than stand-alone clients!

Also, me and my friend Sam Maji decided to created a small SaaS project called, InPoster(https://inposter.vercel.app) which will generate you viral LinkedIn posts with hashtags and other decorations just by taking some keywords from you about the topic. We challenged ourselves to build the project within one night, and we successfully did that, but it took some more days to improve some of the features and fix the bugs!

March, 2024

I updated my old portfolio site and revamped it completely. I focused a lot on the design this time and added a lot of animations using GSAP. You can check it out from here: https://swapnoneel.vercel.app

Also, this month, I completed solving 500 problems on Leetcode and got really consistent in participating in the contests, and achieved my highest rating of 1662 points!

And one notable thing, I got an offer as a Front-End Engineer from a renowned start-up, but had to reject it because they wanted me as a full-time on-site employee, which was not possible for me because of my college and current scenario!

April, 2024

This was the month of my end-semester exams, so definitely I was invested in that. But, I didn’t stopped practicing and solving DSA problems, and completed learning Graphs during this period of time.

Also, I contributed a lot in Keploy’s Open-Source repositories this month, and created a sample app for them using Flask and MongoDB. Not only that, due to my excessive contribution to their projects, I was able to become one of the Top Contributors for the month!

May, 2024

Maybe this was my most favorite month of the year! Started the month with a large freelancing work. It was related to image classification based on the locations from Google Maps (It may sound gibberish, but sadly I can’t elaborate more than this because of strict MoU). I had to get my hands dirty with image optimization, had to find innovative ways to store the images and make it available for my ML model at a steady stream. As I was on post-exam vacation, I was able to invest a lot of time in this and was able to deliver this project way before the deadline!

Also, I worked on improving a old project of mine called MAKAUT Buddy which I had mentioned in my last blog. I revamped the Dashboard section completely, and made it more functional and feature-rich.

Additionally, I wanted to create something unique and decided to create some npm packages. So, I created my first package called swapnoneel, which will give a short bio about me and all of my social handles when you run npx swapnoneel from your terminal. This was just the beginning, because I planned to create way more complex projects than this!

And the best part about the month was that I got a remote opportunity to work as an Intern with Keploy, because of my extensive contributions to their projects in the recent times 🥳

June, 2024

Started this month while making a npm package called get-response. It’s a terminal based application that interacts with the Google's Gemini API to generate content based on the user input. It allows you to ask questions directly or provide context from files, images or directories, and get the response in a simple and easy to understand interface. Also, you can automate some terminal commands by prompting for the task. And additionally, we also have support for responses from Stack Exchange sites like Stack Overflow. It got over thousands of downloads and got extremely positive response. I incrementally updated it throughout the month and kept on adding more and more features to it.

Delivered a python-based ML project for a research scholar, and as a part of it I had to explore Streamlit a bit, and while doing so, I made this app using Gemini’s API, that can convert your provided design into working HTML and CSS code. You can try it for yourself from here: https://ui-to-code.streamlit.app

July, 2023

In my previous blog, I mentioned that I attended Eastern India’s biggest hackathon “Hack 4 Bengal 2.0”, but sadly we had to return mid-way because of an unavoidable circumstance. So, it was the time to make it a success in their next iteration, “Hack 4 Bengal 3.0”. So at very end of last month, me along with my other two teammates Tuhin Poddar and Sam Maji attended the hackathon. We created a cloud-based AI powered terminal called “Term AI”, that let’s you code from anywhere at anytime from whichever device you want, which frees you from the hassle of carrying a laptop or relying on a desktop while travelling. It was really fun to make this project, because at this point we are making something unique that can be used by folks in their day-to-day life!

And, we ended up winning the prize of second runner-up among all of the 300+ participants. It was a really enjoyable moment for us, because from failing to stay throughout the hackathon in last year to winning it in this year, felt like a redemption arc for me! And it genuinely felt extremely good!

Also, I organized an open-source bootcamp under the hood of Keploy, called the “Keploy Rain of Code”, which led to an massive upsurge of open-source contributors for Keploy, and it was an unique experience for me to guide and manage so many folks all at once, and giving each one of them equal attention! The program was a great success and we were able to get a lot of new quality contributors.

August, 2024

This was again the month of our end-semester exam, and I had to invest the majority amount of time on my college academics. So, it was kind of stale from my tech side. I just delivered a small technical writing project during this month.

But, I kept in touch with DSA and continued solving more and more problems just like I was doing consistently throughout this period.

September, 2024

This month was a bit hectic for me, as I was dealing with some personal problems, and also got two large development projects at the same time. So, I had to work for long hours straight. There were some days in these month where I didn’t even got the time to sleep. But the good thing is, I was able to deliver those projects successfully (and although, I can’t talk about the nature of the project or its tech-stack, but I can say it was unique and was an extremely enriching experience for me).

October, 2024

This month, I created a RAG-based AI chatbot for Keploy, which is being trained on the Keploy docs and gives response for each and every Keploy-related question that you ask it!

Other than this, I worked on delivering a couple of articles for a client and worked on creating the code documentation for an early-stage startup. Also, I worked on making a website design as a part of another gig.

Bonus

I have tried to mention most of the important stuff here. But I want to mention/clarify some things that weren't mentioned in the timeline or haven’t got reflected enough:

• Solving DSA problems was a integral part of my journey, and almost everyday I practiced problems on Leetcode, starting from November, last year. And I’ve been highly consistent in doing that!

  

• I’ve mentioned about only the important or substantial freelancing works that have influenced my journey and have taken quite a few days or weeks to finish. Other than the mentioned ones, I’ve done a lot of other works in the freelancing space, which aren’t that worthwhile to mention.

• In few places, I’ve mentioned about what I’ve done while working within Keploy. But please take note that these were just a few things that I really loved working on, or was worthy of mentioning here. Being a DevRel is a lot more than this!

• I invested majority of my freelancing money in stocks or spent them in buying assets. And also, I gifted myself a Nothing Phone (2a) this year, and also built a completely new work-setup for me in our house! Other than these, I paid the semester fees this year, all by myself; and also have taken care of my closed ones.

• In my last year’s blog, I had mentioned that I was mentoring my juniors and guiding them, which I did consistently throughout this year too, but I didn’t felt the need to mention it here and elaborating on that front. If you are eager to learn more about it, you can go through our LinkedIn page.

• I was active on Twitter(X) throughout this time, and was able to grow my follower count up to 1800 people. You can checkout my profile from here! And tried to be as active on LinkedIn as possible, you can checkout my LinkedIn profile from here.

Was I able to meet my expectations?

Previously, in my first year of tech journey, I mentioned about some of the plans or goals that I want to achieve in my second year. Among them, I targeted to solve over 600+ Leetcode problems by the end of second year, and I was able to go way beyond that, and have solved just about 750 problems!

I wanted to start delving deep into the domain of AI/ML, but sadly enough I was able to scratch only the surface. But I achieved my plan of making some SaaS products with my knowledge of AI/ML and Web Development, through InPoster, TermAI and Get Response.

I planned to attend more hackathons, but I attended only one of them. This was an well thought out decision because rather than focusing on quantity, I had decided to focus on the quality and attended the hackathons that felt worthy of my time, efforts and skills. Although, I was prepared to attend two more hackathons, but due to exams and other schedule issues, I wasn’t able to participate in them.

Also, I planned to delve into the topics of System Design and Operating System, which I did in this year. And, my plan of grabbing an internship and contributing to large-scale open-source projects also got fulfilled through Keploy.

And finally, my plan of guiding my juniors was fruitful and I have been guiding them throughout this whole time, and have expanded our scope in doing so!

My Plans for the Third Year

I want to focus on learning AI and ML in-depth this year, which I wasn’t able to fulfill completely in my last year. And this is my highest priority right now. Also, I want to create some innovative projects on the way while learning it.

I want to focus on my college academics a bit more, which I’ve completely neglected throughout my second year. And focus on the core subjects which will come really handy in future.

I’m also looking forward for a full-time developer role or to get an SDE/SWE internship from a renowned organization.

Also, I would like to participate in more and more coding contests, because although I had consistently started attending them this year but failed to do so because of timing issues. So, I would consider switching the platform and attend more and more contests as possible.

Other than these, I want to face more challenges and learn new stuffs that will come across my way. And I plan to continue doing what I’ve been doing throughout these months, and maintain the same level of consistency!

Conclusion

And that's a wrap!! But if you have any queries regarding my journey or any suggestions for my future, I would love to hear that from you in the comments. And if you want to stay connected with me, you can follow me here or on my other social handles. Thank You for reading about my journey, have a nice day ahead!!