I try my best to be a sponge, soaking up all the great advice people have been telling me here and there. I tried my best to make sure I was applying the advice to my own journey as a developer. Unfortunately, other students and people may be too busy with the coding challenges, or may forget the advice told, myself included. Therefore, I want to blog and share with you what you should be doing everyday.

Contribute something to GitHub everday

ETA: 10min

There are three ways to receive a contribution on your GitHub profile:

1. Create a pull request
2. Commit a change you have made to some code
3. Open an issue

This should not be hard to do since you should be already coding everyday! In addition, the time it takes to complete at least one of these tasks is very minimal! The reason why you should be doing this everyday is because it shows that you are active, coding or contributing. Although the HR department you have to initially deal with only understands linkedin profiles, after that first hoop you successfully jump through, the developers you will be working with will want to see your green friendly github profile.

Register your own, custom domain

ETA: 10min

We are not living in the 1990s anymore, or even the 2000s. You want to to unique. You want to be special. And there is no better way to do that than to purchase your own custom domain. There are a couple of things that I would like to clarify:

1. Custom domains are not hard to setup! Please let me know if you need any help with setting one up!
2. Custom domains are cheap! You can easily purchase a custom domain with hover for $8 for your first year, and then $15 for each consecutive year.

Blog about your learning journey everyday on your new, custom domain

ETA: 30min - 1hour

The reason why I suggested you should purchase your own, custom domain is to use it to share your developing journies with the hacker community. Not only does it encourage new hackers to start, but it also helps document your beautiful journey learning the ins and outs of a hacker. For those that want to start a career in this field, it definitely helps employers see the hours of hard work you put in.

Make time to say hi to your cohort mates

ETA: 5min

It’s good to be very passionate about the challenges presented to you everyday. However, I challenge you to spend 5 minutes everyday to chat with anyone at Dev Bootcamp. In my opinion, the exorbitant amount of money we all spent to come to Dev Bootcamp isn’t just to code everyday. I believe a part of the total cost of the tuition includes the connections you make at Dev Bootcamp that you wouldn’t have made if you didn’t come to Dev Bootcamp. I think that you would be robbing yourself if you chose to devote most of your time to just code. I believe maintaining good connections with your peers is just as important as being a master ninja coder, if not more.

Practice to communicate

ETA: null

The culture that developers currently have is to work in groups. I am sure that everyone at Dev Bootcamp has experienced some sort of frustration with their partners / groups. However, this is inevitable. In real life, conflict is inevitable. Therefore, dealing with conflict isn’t about avoiding confrontation, or brushing off problems you think are minor. Dealing with conflict is communicating every problem that you are facing with the code, or your partner, or with your personal life. I am not saying to spill your deepest secrets with your partner. I am saying to give your partner the respect to educate him/her on what is happening with your life and thoughts. Not only is this a vital skill for programming with groups in the real world, but it is a vital skill to maintain a healthy relationship with your family, friends, and/or significant other.

Conclusion

There are many other great advice that I always hear at Dev Bootcamp. However, I think that if you had to try to create daily habits that you should do, these five points are the most important. Not only will you learn to become an awesome hacker, you will become a better person.

I would love to hear your thoughts! Please let me know if you have any other important advice that students should practice on a daily basis, or if you have any thoughts on the above advice!