⭐️⭐️Introduction⭐️⭐️

Recently, the result of the first competition of the year 2023 on Hashnode got declared. Check the link. I am happy to share that I could be considered among the Noteworthy Authors even though I didn't win anything. It has truly been a blessing for me to be on an amazing platform like this and learn a lot from this community.

I always end the year by reflecting on the journey and writing down the blessings of the year. I am glad that Hashnode gave me a chance to do so.

I enjoy reading articles on Hashnode. I have read and commented on some articles as entries to #DevRetro2022 contest and declaring the result on the weekend presented me with a whole set of articles to read during the weekend. When it is about personal stories, it becomes even more interesting to me.

In this post, I am going to share my takeaways from the articles of the top 10 winners of #DevRetro2022.

⭐️1. Coming Out Of comfort zone with Iqra Firdose⭐️

Iqra Firdose in her post has shared how coming out of her comfort zone by exposing herself to social media like LinkedIn, Twitter and Youtube facilitated her immensely in her tech journey. She started with C and slowly moved to other languages like Python, JAVA, CSS, HTML, etc. After getting the laptop in October, she started participating in open source projects: Hacktoberfest. She has contributed her articles to Aviyel. It's great that she has mentioned it in her article which I was unaware of. She has also written technical articles on Hashnode. She has received recognition for her work in Aviyel and Hashnode. It shows that she has come out as a winner wherever she has put her hands into. This article is a reminder of the fact that "It's better late than never" which she herself has included in the section giveaway. From this article, I am inspired to start contributing to open-source projects that I have been putting off, for some reason or the other.

It's a very concise and inspiring article. Whenever I feel that it's too late, I will be reminded of this post and all that Iqra could do in a short span of 3 months because she continues with what she had.

⭐️2. Alberto's journey as a computer scientist⭐️

Alberto Gonzalez started 2022 with the aim to be a better version of his previous self. He tried his hands in different roles of Software Developer from Back/Front end Developer, Automation Engineer to CI/CD Engineer to learn things that he had not learned before. He also explored the field of data science through various courses by Kaggle, used JupyterNotebook extensively, and expanded his knowledge in libraries like GeoPandas. As a competitive programmer enthusiast, setting problems for The 2021 ICPC Caribbean Finals(Qualifier) enabled him to brush his basics of algorithm and data structure and improved his writing and code reviewing skills. He also taught some computer science courses to undergraduate students of Computer Science and High School students.

The article ends with a note of gratitude which I liked the most, it's absolutely impossible to accomplish all these without a supporting network of family and friends.

⭐️3.Malavi's little Tech Journey⭐️

Malavi Pande's little journey , which she considers a 4-month Safari, takes me to my undergraduate days when I underwent similar emotions regarding my future for being financially independent and getting places in a reputed company/organization. She described how Kunal Kushwaha's DSA played a major role in her preparation. This gives me the motivation to go through this playlist! She has very transparently mentioned her experience of contributing to an open-source project through Hacktoberfest. She ended up making 7PRs to the repo when she aimed for only 1 PR by the end of October 2022. This is something I need to learn, to get started first. I shouldn't have quitted Hacktoberfest2022 so easily! :( She started 100DaysOfCode but quit for her semester exam because of inconsistency. That's something that most people as human being face, to be inconsistent, no matter what! She has also shared her experiences about blog writing, learning and building in public, and attending Twitter spaces and events as a newbie.

What I liked most about this article is Malavi's honesty in sharing about her learning and the challenges she faced at each juncture. How humbly she considers her efforts as nothing as compared to other hustlers in the tech field in spite of achieving a lot in a short span of just 4 months, is something to learn from!

⭐️4. Mikiko's transition from MLOpsIC to DevRel⭐️

The fact that Mikiko Bazeley's article has been featured on Hashnode gives me enough reason not to skip anything even though it appears lil lengthy to me.

First of all, I loved the blog banner which is a pic collage of Miki's various events/special moments of 2022. The instant connection that I find with the writer is her short name, Miki is the same as my nickname! :) It was equally fascinating to know about her connection with India.

I loved the way Miki has described her challenges, learnings, and exploring new places, events, experiences, cultures, and people, in spite of being an introvert. The result of stepping out of her comfort zone has been so rewarding for her. She has very strongly emphasized the importance of weak ties through different social media like LinkedIn and Twitter. These weak ties have helped her grow; both professionally and personally. From being a speaker at various Twitter spaces, podcasts, and conferences to trying her hand at technical writing, salsa, knitting, and writing books she has done it all. All these shows, what a multi-faceted personality Miki has and her passion for her hobbies. I am deeply moved by the way she has acknowledged everyone who helped her in her tech journey and she has been so meticulous about not missing a single person, I think. The acknowledgment part covers almost half of the length of the article!

About the article, I love the way appropriate quotes have been used to justify the situation and I appreciate the sequencing.

⭐️5. Tawaliou's beginning of his professional career⭐️

What caught my attention in this post is the mention of Embedded System by Tawaliou ALAO. It was great to find this article among the top 10 articles as I had already read and commented on this article before the declaration of the result. He starts this article by briefing about the activities of the last 6 months of 2021 which have greatly impacted his progress in 2022. After finalizing his project in Engineering, he did an internship in embedded systems when he got to realize that he wanted to make a career as an embedded system engineer. Even though the company was interested to hire him as a full-time employee after his graduation, he decided not to continue with it for some non-encouraging/motivating conditions, which I think is the best decision he took, for his career. He attended his first talk at one of the Tech conferences about embedded coding. He switched from energy engineering to software programming. I loved the idea of a roadmap of progress that he has made as it gives clarity of progress. He has described his month-wise progress in learning and advancing to the level of senior developer from a beginner.

He concluded his article by jotting down areas/skills he wants to work on. Overall, it's a well-rounded article covering part of the dev journey in detail.

⭐️6.Dahud's benefit from 8-months of ASUU strike⭐️

Dahud Yusuf Ishola introduces himself as a front-end developer and instructor in this blogpost. I was instantly drawn to his post by #100DaysOfCode because I am an enthusiast of #100DaysOfX challenge and have completed some of these challenges in the past. I understand how much #100DaysOfX challenges have helped me accomplish certain goals by pushing me to be more consistent. Dahud, could complete a lot of stuff in #100DaysOfCode and moved to other platforms to hone his skills."Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) initiated a month-long warning strike that lasted eight months." This event initially made Dahud upset as his graduation day would be delayed but he had something in his hand as he had already been accepted into the ALX program. He was among the top students at the 6-weeks long Pre-fellowship of TiideLab. His rejection in TiideLab Fellowship Cohort-4 didn't stop him from trying more, he was offered a 3-month internship in web development at NeoDocto Inc. He got to work on back-end development through 3-months long I4GXZuri training and completed it successfully. He also signed up for Techathon training.

All these skills mixed with his networking skill got him a remote instructional position on the front end, discontinued it to join a non-remote job. In instincthub's tech diversity BootCamp, he made it to the list of top 10 students. He attended #DevFestLagos as his first offline conference of the year.

I loved the way how he summed up his tech journey of training through different programs and boot camps, on a whiteboard. He has concluded this article with goals for 2023.

⭐️7.Timonwa's journey from surviving to thriving⭐️

Timonwa Akintokun has written about how she made 2022 memorable by accomplishing 20 /28 tasks on her list. She started her journey without a laptop, got placed in a front-end position in a start-up, and left it eventually because of the toxic environment. She struggled in producing tech articles as well as socializing with people around her. Initially, she was stressed about speaking in a Twitter space as a facilitator but got the hang of it later. I was so motivated and thrilled to read her series of achievements as many of her articles have been featured and paid for. She realized the power of networking in helping her to get jobs and gigs. She strengthened her technical skills and contributed to many open-source projects. She attended a lot of tech events; online and offline. She also got a chance to mentor many in Twitter Space through the skills of her expertise. I loved the way she has not shied away from writing disappointments as success and failures; both are parts of life. She has acknowledged the people who have helped her to advance in her career.

Overall, it's a very balanced article, covering important parts of Timonwa's journey and it's so good to see how things turned in her favor, in the end, unlike the beginning.

⭐️8.Bhavani's journey from burn-out developer to Indie Hacker⭐️

Bhavani Ravi 's journey from a burnout developer to exploring the unknown field of publishing a technical book, market research, and launching courses and products to market is nothing less than a roller-coaster ride. This journey was definitely worth it in the end. I really love the quotations that she has put so aptly before the end of each section. From therapy on mental health to getting into consulting, she didn't know that she had a great career ahead, waiting to be embraced. On her solo trip, she realized another life-long aim of hers apart from being in the field of Software Engineering, is to start her business. Entrepreneurship is not at all an easy path, I feel. It's full of uncertainties and failures.

This is a short article, well-written quotations make it even more interesting and act as a connecting bridge to the next section.

⭐️9. Mozia's journey into tech⭐️

Chukwuechezonam❤'s year started with a sense of disappointment of not making it to her dream college but little did she know that she would rock this year by the end of it. I am impressed by the way this 18-year-old has organized her progress month-wise. That has been possible because she, at the begging of the blog post, mentioned her habit of writing down her plans, dreams, or aspirations on paper. This habit of writing down tasks and success must have definitely helped her in writing this article. Just like every 18-year-old, she was confused about the domains she should focus on and explored domains like data analysis with Python, web development, front-end development with HTML, CSS, etc. In spite of a lot of bottlenecks like depending on her sister's laptop, and the crashing up of her mobile through which she used to put regular updates on Twitter about her tech journey, she didn't stop chasing her dreams. By using the skills that she learned, she created a lot of projects and volunteered work. She continued applying for internships/jobs despite facing continuous rejection and was successful to complete her internship with Juniper Labs.

I am moved by her faith in God and consistency which has helped her to win the Laptop which she deserved. It's incredible to witness such energy and eagerness to learn from an 18-year-old. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this article and there are a lot of takeaways for me, from it.

⭐️10. Matt's Year-End Retro for 2022⭐️

Matt Smith has started this article with a short introduction of himself who hails from England and is working as a Full Stack Developer and Community Manager in a company that has helped him to build his fundamentals in the Tech industry. He has been associated with the tech industry as a student/learner for a long time but never considered it a career until 2018 when a course on Complete Web Development changed his life. I liked the way he has written about the challenges and learnings of 2022 and how honestly he has admitted to not having specifically allotted time to learn skills in 2022 apart from learning through projects. I went through the project descriptions that he has written and found them fascinating. Out of those projects, I really appreciate the idea of the ZTM passport. What could be a better way to pay back to the resources that helped you in gaining skills, in form of products for them by using those skills? He had a lot of achievements that motivated me very much. It's a very nice idea to specifically write down the goals for 2023 if one wants to accomplish them. This is what he has exactly done. This could act as a reminder for him to revisit his plans and check if they have been completed or not.

Overall, I liked this article. It's concise and up to the point of revealing the intent clearly so that the readers don't get bored.

⭐️⭐️Conclusion⭐️⭐️

Life is too short to just learn from own mistakes. One can enrich his learning experiences by carefully observing the mistakes that others have made. With little time and so much to do, one just can't rely on his own mistakes alone. From these articles, I got to know their stories of success, struggles, and failures. This gave me an idea of tackling the issues if I encounter some similar ones in the future. I learned that I shouldn't be so quick to give up on tasks that seem too challenging to me. I congratulate all the winners for being chosen among the Top 10 winners of #DevRetro2022 and wish them luck in their future endeavors.