Lately quite a few posts on the #100DaysOfCode challenge have come up on my Twitter timeline. I was curious what it is all about. So, I started to do some research and I really liked what I was reading.

In this post I am writing about my own commitment to the challenge. If you want to know more about it yourself, start reading the initial article on medium or go straight to the official website.

Official rules

The #100DaysOfCode challenge outlines two main rules:

  1. Code minimum an hour every day for the next 100 days.
  2. Tweet your progress every day with the #100DaysOfCode hashtag.

It also talks about other considerations like reaching out to others who are also doing the challenge or keeping a 100 days journal.

My rules

My personal motivation is to keep learning and dive into subjects other than what is required at my current job. I have a broad interest and would like to use this challenge to study, experience and learn. To accomplish these goals, I will adapt the rules a little.

1. Code (almost) every day for the next 100 days

With almost I am not intending to create a loophole or justify slacking off. Sunday is a day of rest where I do not work and try to spend time with my family and spiritual matters. So, I am committing to 6 days of coding a week.

On a coding day I do not require myself to spend at least one hour on the challenge. Rather I am committing myself to making meaningful use of the time. It should be first a learning experience (even challenging) and second fun as well.

2. Blog about it

This might be a second challenge I am trying to accomplish at the same time. Instead of just tweet about it, I want to record my learnings in a blog post. The latter is more of a habit-forming challenge than the initial.

Topic

One of the most productive factors for me is focus. Being able to focus on just one task helps me work very effectively. In more of a natural way I am living a clean desk, zero inbox and other policies or principles.

Just recently I switched from the old beloved Wunderlist to a new and shiny Microsoft To-Do to keep track of ideas and work that needs to be done. In a list called Play.Fail.Succeed. I keep a collection of topics, technologies, methods and so on which I want to study and learn more about it.

Secondly, I use Pocket to keep track of resources of interest, articles I want to read later and so forth.

Both tools provide excellent resources for my #100DaysOfCode challenge.

In this challenge I will focus on DevOps. I am very interested in automating things and decrease the amount of time spent in repetitive tasks. By doing this challenge I hope to advance my knowledge and skills greatly. I want to gain a better understanding of

  • Provisioning,
  • Orchestration,
  • Configuration Management,
  • Deployment and
  • Automation in general.

Commitment

Starting today I’m publicly committing to the 100DaysOfCode Challenge with the here outlined rules! Learn more and join me!

Gude Laune