My Goals with 100DaysofCode
Tags: 100daysofcode, codenewbie, gamedev, beginners
Published: 2022-02-08 21:08:02

Hello! My name is Anu and I am a programming beginner. I started about a little over half a year ago and decided to begin my coding journey with Python. After learning for half a year while a full-time student, I was able to earn my certification from Codecademy. With my newfound knowledge, I decided to build my first terminal game, "108", and am still currently making changes and updates to it. However, with school starting up again, I feel as though I don't have enough of the time I did beforehand as it is my last semester and I am taking a lot of writing intensive courses. 

Thus, I decided I wanted to attempt to do #100DaysofCode to challenge myself and motivate myself to keep moving forward. 

In this post I will be setting goals for myself to focus on and what I hope to gain from this challenge. Then I will be posting for the next 100 days on this platform what I have accomplished or what I have learned.

**My goals summary:**
- "108"
- GitHub & terminal 
- C# & Unity
- Portfolio website
- Network

**My goals in detail:**
- Finish coding my "108" game with the new rules and functionalities as well as finish fixing some of the bugs. I had already "finished" the game a month ago, but my cousin reached out to me to let me know I had some of the rules wrong. When I tried to apply the new rules to my game, I noticed that my code wasn't efficient and began to have bugs with the new code. So, I restarted from scratch a few weeks ago to make the coding easier to follow and flow.
- I want to learn more about how to use GitHub and utilizing its features like projects and workflow. As well as learn more about utilizing the terminal and how that works. I have the basics, but I want to learn more than just push and pull.
- I want to begin my first 2d game in Unity and begin working on level design, storyboarding and coding the first few levels to add to my portfolio. The game I have in mind is a large project that I want to work on long-term, so I am going to downscale it to a few levels so that I have something on my portfolio once I begin applying to graduate school. In attempting to make this game, I will need to learn how to code C# and I want to also learn to make my own art for my game as well. I have no decided what software I want to use to make it, but I am thinking of using Blender. 
- Learning HTML, CSS and JavaScript to make my portfolio website from scratch. I have a specific idea for my website that I want to implement and it requires some work that can't be done through resources like WordPress or Squarespace, unfortunately. Through planning and coding this, I also want to learn how to use Figma. Learning these skills are less for my career goals and more for my own personal interest. I have done a small bit of web development in the past and it isn't something I plan or wish to do as a full-time career. 
- I am very much a beginner to this industry. I am not even studying computer science or programming at my university. I am actually studying creative writing, so I unfortunately do not know a lot of the jargon or how to push myself out there to network. So another goal of mine is to find the confidence in myself to reach out to other beginners and even more senior programmers and make new friends and contacts in the industry. 

**My desired outcome:**
That I am proud of the work I have done over the course of 100 days.

I do think my goals are ambitious, especially with all the other projects I have going on with my creative writing degree. However, I think as long as I am satisfied with the work I have accomplished, I think I will be happy. An inch is still progress. I know I won't have everything on my goals done by the end of 100 days, but I will certainly try!

**How I will be formatting each day post:**
1. What I have done (literally speaking)
2. What I am most proud of
3. What I learned
4. What I want to focus on for tomorrow

For other things I would love to also do:
- Document my journey of creating my 2d game via devvlogs on YouTube
- Work on an updated resume
- Polish my LinkedIn page
- Learn more information on the industry

_For those who are going on their own 100 day journey or have completed this challenge in the past, any helpful tips and tricks or advice in the comments would be most appreciated!._