I wanted to ask you all and would like to know how much has having a Twitter account helped you with your coding.
I am planning to get back to my coding journey soon, and this time actually finish some of the projects in FCC, and go for the first 2 certifications.
In order to “push” myself not to stop again for a long time or even quit, I am also thinking of commiting to the #100DaysOfCode challenge. You know, don’t break the chain and stuff…!
I know that one of the rules is to post your progress daily on Twitter, so you can hold yourself accountable, and to also benefit from the encouragement and positive energy that all the people that are in the same situation are giving.
I also remember that in one of the older iterations of the FCC site, in the first introductory steps, one of them was recommending you to create a Twitter account, if I remember correctly, and in many FCC articles people were saying that you should put yourself out there, network with other people and present your ideas and projects, as that in turn might get you some recognition as well, as it’s generally a serious platform and almost all developers are having a profile there.
The thing is that, I am a bit skeptical about this, as I am the kind of person that can have the urge to check their account often (laptop or phone), and can waste a lot of time like that in a day.
Plus in combination to the procrastinator that I can be, this can be quite counterproductive.
This is the reason I deactivated my Facebook account a few years ago, after all.
So I was wondering if having a Twitter account has really helped you, and how much.
Has it indeed helped you with the #100DaysOfCode challenge, and in what ways(s)?
Has your online presence there been positive and has it actually benefited you in your coding journey/life?
Has it given recognition to your projects and have potential employers noticed you because of that?
Is it at the end of the day worth it to have an account on that medium?
I would really like to hear your thoughts on this topic.
Thank you for your time!
I did 100daysofcode earlier this year and it ended up being a total waste of time for me.
I am a beginner and when you see other people’s hashtags and they’ve seemingly scripted a ballistic missile or a whole game in Unity in a day, it’s incredibly deflating.
The Twitter account I used, ended up being a timeline of posturing and false platitudes, as people constantly pretended that they were coding or posted pictures of their neat desks without actually offering anything of substance, with a title like “FOCUSED”. And you’re sat there thinking “Mate, you’ve just posted a picture of a pen and a mousemat”.
There are of course a lot of people who want to help and there are some great resources available on Twitter, but in terms of community, places like FCC are much more valuable to me than a space which incentivises follower numbers and not tangible help.
Thanks a lot for your reply and for sharing your personal experience.
I have noticed too in the past the situation you described, with the picture-perfect desks, etc, when I would stumble across random posts about coding.
It can indeed be discouraging, especially for people that are just starting.
It’s like those pro gamers that the kids are watching nowadays on YouTube, and they think it’s super easy to become one, and when they go online, they get defeated right away and they lose any interest afterwards.
However, did your account help you in any way?
Did you receive any positive feedback or encouragement, besides the ones pretending that everything is easy?
As I mentioned in the original post, I am interested whether people are getting anything out of it towards their advancement, presenting themselves and perhaps connecting?
Is it in the end worth investing the time to create and maintain a nice account on Twitter?
encouraging two people per day is important, plus using the correct tags
the tags because your post is then retweeted by bots that monitor those tags, and ends under the eyes of people that use those tags too, and encouraging two people because then after a while you start getting back
from a new account is not really that easy, but you can get back a lot of motivation if you keep posting daily your progress on a project and a link to the project you are doing
I was like one sixth of the way when I was starting to get interactions back, but I had to stop for personal reasons, but I will get back to it
If you know that social media accounts hurt your productivity and/or your life in general, then don’t create a Twitter account. Some people benefit from it and others don’t. No big deal.