The environment around me ( before joining IIITV ) was that I was the one who knew most of the stuff, and eventually it made me a bit lazy. It happens that when you feel that you know ‘enough’, you stop pushing yourself, and learning new things. It happened with me too.

But after joining IIITV, I was introduced to a differant environment, a community of students, who knew a hell lot more than me, and also, they were inspiring and helping. There were some seniors who inspired me to move forward and push myself.

Also I was introduced to Sport Programming. Sport Programming helped me understand the importance of Logic. Also I came to know, whatever solution we may find to a problem, there may be some optimal solutions which may change the game. For example, if we create an application for sorting n numbers, we have a number of algorithms to choose from. Let’s say Person a creates a code to sort n numbers using Bubble Sort algorithm, and Person b uses Heap Sort algorithm, then the program by Person b will be able to solve more lists of n numbers, as Heap Sort is a better algorithm than Bubble Sort.

I got an introduction to FOSS ( Free and Open Source Softwares ) too. The community in our institute is a bit inclined towards FOSS. FOSS has a really huge community base all over the world. Even before joining IIITV, I had used many FOSS softwares, like Inkscape ( alternative to Adobe Illustrator ), GIMP ( alternative to Adobe Photoshop ), LibreOffice ( alternative to Microsoft Office ),etc. The main reason behind using FOSS was the price factor. They are free to use, and also offer very similar features. Also they have very huge and active communities. And the best part is that you can contribute directly into the software that you use. The students at IIITV, who actively contribute to FOSS, also manage to get selected into Google Summer Of Code.

Other newly thriving fields, like Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Deep Learning, Computer Vision, etc. also caught my attention here. But currently I am more focused towards Web Development and contributing to FOSS. There is a great deal to learn from the communities that support FOSS.

I started learning Python, and soon it became one of my favourite languages. You can do almost anything with Python - web development, ML, AI, CV, scripting, etc. I also got my hands on Django - a Python framework that makes the lives of web developers a lot easy. It had a lot of inbuilt functionalities that help in shipping a product really fast. Also, from a security point of view, Django has a lot of tools and inbuilt functionalities to help you. It is a very powerful tool.

During my first Summer break, I tried running JavaScript on the backend using Node.js. It was great to know that we can do backend and frontend development using a single language ( most parts ). Also JavaScript has a huge community too, so we have access to lot of libraries and frameworks, like ReactJS, AngularJS, VueJS, EmberJS, etc. I also learnt VueJS, as it is trending now-a-days. VueJS incorporates the best parts of ReactJS and AngularJS in a single framework. Also JavaScript has entered the buzzing tech worlds of AI, ML, CV, etc. It’s interesting where JavaScript will go in the future. As it is commonly said, “Anything that can be written in JavaScript, will eventually be written in JavaScript”.

Currently I am learning ReactJS, a Frontend framework in JavaScript. There are certain FOSS projects which I intend to contribute to, and the frontend part is developed using ReactJS, so learning it will help me in contributing.

I think I’ll wrap up this post here.

Adios Folks.