August 2024: Initiatives

Introduction

In this article, I’ll share my progress on the tasks I planned for August. As we celebrate Uzbekistan’s 33rd Independence Day today, I want to start by congratulating everyone on this special occasion.

1. “Kompas”?Launch

This month, I didn’t publish our Kompas website due to other commitments. Although the project is already built, I’m not satisfied with the current design. I found a better design approach and plan to launch the website once everything is completed to my satisfaction.

2. Personal?Project

This month, I started working part-time for Cloud Initiatives Inc , where I previously interned. The company specializes in cloud technology solutions, focusing on security, cost, automation, and performance. I began working on their new project called CourseMatix , which helps colleges enhance their CIS and CS programs with hands-on labs to bridge the skills gap between graduates and employers.

Over the past two weeks, I’ve learned and practiced several things:

• Standup Meetings: Participated in daily standups to discuss progress, plan next steps, and address any issues.
• GitLab: Learned the basics of GitLab for version control in CourseMatix.
• Pull Requests (PRs): Created new branches for each task to streamline reviews and prevent production issues.
• Skeletons: Developed website skeletons to keep users engaged while data loads.
• Components: Worked on various components, including React Select and Tailwind DateRangePicker. We faced a problem where the default Tailwind design conflicted with our own CSS, causing crashes. The solution was to swap the order of two Tailwind CSS files.

3. My LeetCode?Journey

I solved Daily Challenges on LeetCode every day to keep my skills sharp. These challenges covered various topics such as arrays, strings, sliding window, hash tables, two pointers, binary search, and sorting. Working through these challenges helped me gain a better understanding of various data structures.

You can check out my LeetCode Profile to see my progress and contributions.

4. SWE?Articles

In August, I read Medium articles from people who joined 谷歌 and found these tips helpful:

1. Develop Soft Skills: Work on your communication, teamwork, and problem-solving skills.
2. Understand Google’s Culture: Learn about Google’s values and align with their company culture.
3. Show Leadership: Highlight any projects where you took initiative or led a team.

5. My August Medium?Article

In August, I didn’t write a Medium article. Instead, I joined the “BRB Fintech Hackcelerator,” a month-long hackathon. Our team of four ( Komron Abdulloev?? , Sanjar Mashakirov , Bilol Tech , and I) participated in this event, which had both online and offline activities.

Hackathon Stages:

1. First Stage - Initial Screening: Out of 200 teams that submitted applications, 125 were selected to move forward based on their fit for the hackathon.
2. Second Stage - MVP Architecture + Interview: We answered questions about our MVP plan, covering key aspects like frontend, backend, and security. After a 10-minute interview, 47 teams were chosen for the final stage.
3. Final Stage - Hackathon Starts: On the opening day, we had an onboarding session covering rules, guidelines, and the schedule.

Our task was to build an MVP for one of the five provided challenges. We chose the “Internal Portal for the Bank” project, focusing on managing employees, organizational structure, requests, announcements, bookings, and calendars.

Our Experience:

The hackathon was set to last for four weeks, but our team decided to quit after just one week. During that first week, we focused on “Requirements Analysis and Solution Design,” developing the system architecture, creating a database schema, deciding on the project’s main components, and preparing technical documentation.

Ultimately, we left the competition due to other personal commitments from our team members. Additionally, several issues with the hackathon itself made it challenging to continue:

Feedback on the BRB Fintech Hackcelerator:

1. Excessive Documentation: The requirement for weekly reports was overwhelming.
2. Frequent Interruptions: There were too many workshops and meetings, disrupting our workflow.
3. Unnecessary Offline Events: Some of these events were inconvenient, especially for participants coming from the suburbs.

Conclusion

August had its challenges, but I made progress and learned a lot.?

Thanks for reading?:)