I went to my first hackathon and this is what I experienced and thought.

I happened about 2 months ago to discover there was a conference happening in SF. It was called Developer Week 2017.

This happened to be my first hackathon as well. I wasn't sure what to expect. It also occurred on a Saturday and Sunday.

I found a team to work on, it was for a door dash like application, but for stadiums. I ended up building the API so the android devs could retrieve the data.

It was a simple node, express, mongodb setup. But I totally felt all these mixture of feelings as I was working on this simple piece of backend code. I read this article before writing this blog, which was helpful for a junior like me.

One of the things that hackathons teaches you is how to work together in a team of strangers, bring together your expertise in order to contribute to the development of the app, and learn to accept that sometimes your work may not be used. Although the ideal would be to work together with a group of people you know well, and on a project that the entire team have a fairly good reason to support. But, that's not always how it turns out.

I think that despite the fact that I've been formally learning for about 4 months now, and have had a year more of self-learning, I have really found myself further ahead in my studies than when I first began. Every little bit of knowledge can be useful in developing my skills as a web developer, from studying SQL that one time, to knowing how a mobile app works.

Most of us junior devs that come from a non-CS background may have a bad case of imposter syndromes. We're not gifted with the opportunity or desire to go through the CS programs because maybe we were not supported in that area, or we did not get the after-school tutoring and good instruction at school for mathematics.

But what this hackathon has taught me was that no one is good at everything. Everyone has their flaws, whether that be in designing, coding, communication or leading a project. No one is perfect, and everyone is learning or at least gaining experience from doing.

Being at the bottom of the totem pole is going to suck for awhile. But one day a lucky opportunity will come and you will work on a great project that will help you build your skills so you can move on to the next level. Then that's when you will realize that all those moments contemplating vague concepts, you will eventually get them, and on top of that figure out the next difficult and abstract problem, to one day become the expert.

For my future self, I hope you didn't give up because each day is a struggle, but when you keep trying and look back, you will realize that you have made progress as long as you continue to try and enjoy what you do.

Recently, I moved to one of the biggest tech city of them all, San Francisco or better yet Silicon Valley. Here is where many of the big name companies that is driving our consumption of media built its name, i.e., Google, Apple and Facebook.

Before coming here I had decided to become a programmer.

In my simple life living in the Midwest, I thought that I knew what a programmer meant, and what kind of job I would end up doing.

Building websites right?

Well, that idea of a simple streamline path to becoming what I thought was a simple to describe job was in fact dashed as I got deeper into the field.

The next thing I know people are talking about "Software Engineer" as prominently as "Computer Scientist"  had been back in 2008 when the technology craze had really hit the ceiling (at least for me).

Now, I'm scratching my head and wondering what the hell is a "Software Engineer" and how is anything different from a Front-End, Web Developer, Back-End....

The one thing I have discovered so far is that the field of computer programming is diverse. There is so many faucets of this infinite field that one day you can be expert Python coder to becoming a ninja at DevOps.

Exposure I think is key to really understanding all these crazy paths that exists in the tech field. If I hadn't read countless articles, watched countless videos, searched millions of job posts, or network at dozens of meetups I would not have an inkling of what these terms even mean.

But I'm slowly getting there, and that's the point.

Everyone's journey towards achieving whatever life goal they aim for starts with climbing and pushing through the muck. There's no easy track and even the best ones out there doing all the speaking at workshops and conferences all began just as everyone had, which was scratching their head...wondering what that first term in programming meant.

Not everyone was born knowing everything. Like Sal Khan says "Everyone Can Learn", and that's the point, we're life-long learners and it's by being persistent every day that we end up truly helps us improve.

Nothing comes easily or quickly, but if I want to become awesome at what I want, I've got to work on it.

So like I learned from my first Write/Speak/Code workshop at Github Headquarters in SF on January 21, 2017, you've got to #OwnYourExpertise!

And I didn't define Software Engineer here...and that's the point of this post :-)

Happy 2017!

Many people must have been glad to see 2016 off, especially with so many traumatic news stories and unpredictable events that has happened...Although 2017 did not start off great for some parts around the world...We still live in some of the most interesting times.

Technology is growing (i.e., self-driving cars, AIs, etc), medicine is much better than it had been, people are living longer, there's no shortage of food, and living standards are getting better.

But we shouldn't forget that we share a planet with many other people. And a lot of folks do not have the same access to the goods many of us living in the developed nations do have.

The world is not separated by borders or blocked off by walls.

The air, land and water are still connected no matter if we contain it into small bottles and sell them off for high prices.

My goal for 2017 is to continue to live a zero waste minimalist lifestyle, where my focus in my life is to find ways to produce less waste and to live with less. Not only do I want to do that in my personal life, but also to make my career in a way focus on this.

As a developer, I want to find ways to build apps that provide a service to those folks that want to find ways to improve their health and lifestyles in order to minimize their exposure to the unnecessary. I'm not sure yet what that looks like, but I believe that like everyone in life, we learn from each other and from our experiences. So only time will tell.

So, for now I look forward to continuing our 7th year together with my husband, enjoy our new city of San Jose, and to continue to reduce our wants and waste so that eventually when we start a family and age we can contribute something good to our planet.

"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Meetup.com is a great social media tool for connecting with other people in your community. It's excellent for making friendships especially when you're new to a place.

When my husband and I began moving around to different cities, we used Meetup.com to connect with new friends. It did result in new friendships, and some that have lasted over several years.

However, there is also a darker side to Meetup.com, as with any social media networks.

The dark side includes the possibility of meeting people who are ignorant, arrogant, and flat out hateful.

In my experience so far, I have had two such experiences, and I realized that when you are networking with new people it can result in meeting people who are very opposite of who you are, and people that are not interested in being kind.

I don't want this post to be about the details of my experiences, but more about how these experiences have taught me to grow a thick skin.

I was never a very confident person growing up, I actually had mutism when I was in school, but as I faced many moments in my life meeting people who in my opinion were ignorant, inconsiderate, rude, mean, and hateful, I learned how to quickly move pass the initial shock and come back to a point where I didn't let those people veer me off of my journey in life.

I learned that people are not always thinking about others around them, or at least their priorities aren't necessarily you.

I know that sometimes we face situations where we want to argue, scream, and oppose, but what I have learned in my life is that it is better to be quiet, and learn to pick your battles.

So, networking is about accepting the fact that sometimes we will meet the good and the bad of humanity. We may find long lasting friendships, or we may end up encountering the most deplorable folks.

We do not live in a vacuum, and that sometimes these social media networks are in fact an extreme representation of the world we live in.

There will be trolls.

There will be the opposite of a troll. (Anyone know the word?)

But that doesn't change the fact of who I am, and who you are.

Just because there are a few bad experiences, it shouldn't ever stop us from creating good experiences and we shouldn't lump everyone into the same category. Rather networking is about finding the connections that works, and that are suitable to you.

So when going out there, and connecting with other people, you will find that you may in fact meet folks that aren't going to care about whether they knocked into you, but you will find folks that will turn back around and apologize for knocking into you.

So, never dwell on the dark side, but also at the same time learn to take care of that thicker skin, but do not let that define you and change you into them.