"Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time." - Thomas A. Edison
Hello everyone, Welcome to my tech journey blog, where I'll be sharing all of my adventures in the world of technology with you all. I'm super pumped to have you here, and I can't wait to show you all the cool things I've been learning about.
Whether you're a seasoned tech pro or just starting out, I think you'll enjoy this one. So why not grab a cup of your favorite beverage and join me on this exciting journey? Trust me, it's going to be a blast!
👦 So who am I exactly?
Folks I am Shivang Shandilya, an undergraduate pursuing Information Technology in India. I am a DevOps and Cloud Enthusiast who loves contributing to Open Source and engaging with global communities. And when I say all this about myself, trust me I never imagined myself here 2 years back. I strongly believe in learning and sharing in public. I'm currently engaged in contributing to various CNCF projects such as Kubernetes, Layer5, Armada, etc, improving their documentation and codebase. I'll be attending KubeCon 2023 for the very first time virtually. I'm also a PostMan Student Expert and will try to become a leader by the end of the year.
Ok ok now let's get to the main part, shall we?
☘️ Post 12th grade ( #CoronaEra)
After I finished giving my CBSE board exams we all know what happened right? Yup CORONA... At the time I was really happy that now I can play video games all day long cause even my parents won't say at least go for a walk😂. If only I had known that this was not CORONA ERA instead it was GOLDEN ERA. So like every other Indian student out there, I was also ready to go for my JEE Mains examination cause it's everybody's dream to get into IITs, IIITs, or NITs. So I gave JEE but the rank wasn't good enough to get into even DTU or NIT. I knew that if I took a drop, I could easily get into these cause I was academically good but I just didn't want to waste a whole year cramping the same stuff again and again. It's just not me. So, I was admitted to one of the IP universities with ECE (Electronics and Communication)as my stream which comes under the TIER-3 category in India. But it was fine I knew if I worked hard I could easily get into big tech companies no worries. Now let's get towards my college journey.
🪴College 1st YEAR (Still #CoronaEra)
So as soon as I entered college, everyone wants to explore college life, hang out with friends, and whatnot but it was all again shattered by Corona. But I soon realized that my 1st year isn't going to be what I imagined. We were told that our 1 year is going to be of only 6 months to catch up with lost time.
So, I think we all know how fast these 6 months went but the only good thing that happened at the end of my 1 year was feelings of inferiority and incompetency. And this was a good thing because I had Engineering Graphics as my extra subject in 12 grade but most of the people in my class had Computer Science as their extra so they were a bit ahead of me. This feeling of incompetency was eating me from the inside. I didn't even like my stream (ECE) and then I got to know the concept of upgradation in which if you perform well in your 1 year you get upgraded to IT or CSE. Now I had two goals in my mind:
Get my branch upgraded to either IT or CSE
And start learning coding
🌿College 2nd YEAR (Still #CoronaEra)
So 6 months went by quickly and now we were given a week's break before the start of our 2nd year. The good thing was Corona cases were declining and everything was going back to normal. So now in order to start coding I went on Youtube and searched about coding and we all know if you're in India and you search for this kind of stuff you're bombarded with Bhaiya and Didi's tutorials on the same. But at the time I didn't know anything and I got trapped in all this too. I started coding in C++ because my friends were doing the same at the time.
I followed the tutorials of some Bhaiya who claimed to have the best coding course on the whole youtube and I was pretty intrigued too. He claimed to make students learn in a really simple way and the teachers' teaching was from AMAZON, FACEBOOK, GOOGLE, and whatnot.
At the time all these companies were my sole goal and let's be honest we all first dreamt of getting into FAANG India. I was the same but as I was following his tutorials the teachers' started coding in a really complex way which made me question how did he do this, did that, and whatnot. So I was like it's not my cup of tea and then I decided to take up Web Development, so again like every other student out there I went on Youtube for a roadmap, consulted my seniors and through them got to know about Angela Yu's Complete Web Development Bootcamp.
The experience was amazing I took my sweet time learning Front-End Development and made some cool projects such as Sudoku Solver, Simon Game, and clones of various apps which you can check out on my LinkedIn. I wasn't really interested in Back-End Development so never gave it a shot. Back then I didn't know what Open Source was all about and what opportunities it brought with it. Meanwhile, as all this was going on I got my first goal accomplished which is my branch got upgraded from ECE to IT which meant that now I could focus completely on my development skills.
🍄 Mid 2nd Year
Now Corona cases went really down and things mostly went back to normal I even completed my Front-End Development. So I became really active on LinkedIn to try and find an internship while sending my time there I saw so many people giving LeetCode, CodeChef, and Codeforces contests, and again I was like let's give this a second chance. This time I started coding in JAVA.
Why Java because at that time Kunal Kushwaha's channel was growing at an incredible speed and there were talks of his Java playlist being the best. So I gave it a shot and lemme tell you it was AMAZING. I suddenly felt that I understood everything, all the concepts, and everything. So there goes my 4th semester learning Java, giving contests, and solving SDE sheets and came to a point where I felt confident with DSA questions. Even after solving over 300+ DSA questions, I kept solving more and more to make myself better.
🌳 3rd YEAR -When everything changed for me
As I solved all these questions I was like I have a whole year before placements am I going to do only DSA the whole year? I won't be upskilling myself because I'm only doing this to crack FAANG interviews, I don't really love doing this, do I? This realization came to me when my 5th sem was almost at the end.
So I thought I know fields like Web Development, App Development, ML, AI, and whatnot but I want to do something different. Now I usually saw Kunal uploading DevOps-related videos, so I thought of giving it a shot. Someone told me to check out Saiyam Pathak's DevOps Roadmap and lemme tell you it was the best decision ever...
I saw Saiyam explaining so many technologies that you need to learn in order to get into DevOps and I was overwhelmed because I only have a year before my placements, I do not have any internships like what to do? I asked the same question down in the comment section of that very same video and Saiyam replied:
"Why would you say late? is it too late to learn to program? every year you have new subjects but billions of people already know them but that does not mean its too late for you."
🍁Started with Open-Source
Maybe this was the push that I needed to get started. Side by side I also became aware of what Open Source is all about. This all happened on 20 November 2022. I created an account on Twitter ASAP to connect with like-minded folks, joined several communities, and started connecting with people.
At first, I was overwhelmed but as I attended various Twitter spaces, and community meetings I got the confidence and urge to do even better. I started off with Saiyam's roadmap and side by side approached various individuals on Twitter on how to contribute to Open Source.
“If there is no struggle, there is no progress.” —Frederick Douglass
Now I won't go into too much detail but I basically followed the roadmap, made some amazing DevOps projects, learned to work with AWS, started writing technical blogs, and even became a Student Expert at Postman. It's only been 4 months to all this but the amount of stuff that I have achieved just blows my mind.
I have contributed to various CNCF projects because of which I was even awarded a scholarship to attend KubeCon 2023 virtually. I never would have imagined that I could accomplish so much in a short period of time. This journey has been full of ups and downs but I'm glad it was like this because I was able to find my true passion in the end.
Now I'm trying to go for different cloud and DevOps certifications hoping to land a good internship and the fear of college placements is now gone, why? because now I know I and the knowledge I'll provide is worth much more.
In the end, I would only like to say a very big thanks to Kunal Kushwaha who really enlightened me, even though he doesn't know me but he is my mentor. I'm a little sad that I didn't start all this sooner but you know what they say better late than never right?