I couldn’t think of a better way to start my 100 Days of Coding challenge than with the customary “Hello World.” After all, why shouldn’t my first post be the first thing you learn how to do in any programming language?

Before I start the actual coding, I thought I’d introduce myself, my journey, and what I’m hoping to accomplish.

My name is Neida (pronounced like the neigh in “neighbor”) and I started coding in 2020. While I had dabbled in code before in some school projects and introductory classes, I didn’t consider it serious until then.

Instead of learning how to make my own sourdough starter or bake the perfect banana bread as many others did during the pandemic, I learned how to code.

At the time, I was working with high school students applying to college. I saw firsthand how difficult online schooling was for them, and I wanted to take some stress off their shoulders. I thought that I could make a website for them to keep all of their college application deadlines and materials in one place, a one stop shop of sorts. The wish to learn how to make that led me down a rabbit hole of endless loops, binary search, and fibonacci sequences in my first Python course.

I enjoyed it so much I decided to keep learning and seeking opportunities in that space. Fast forward and two coding programs, 1 internship, and many bugs later, here I am.

I believe you can never stop learning and improving, so I’m continuing to add to my knowledge base through this challenge. I’ve never documented my learning before, but I’ve benefited from the many others who have. Blogs, videos, and Stack Overflow posts have saved me more times than I can count. I decided to finally start sharing my experience in the hopes that my writing might help someone someday.

My starting goal is to learn Java and use it to implement a new backend for my existing project, Mind Palace. I’m sure I’ll end up learning some other things and adding more goals along the way, so stay tuned!

Follow my journey on my blog: blog.neidacreates.com