From Developer to Dev Content Creator - My 2020 Story

Here is my review of 2020 and the story of how I became a content creator from being just a quiet developer.

2020 was a very interesting year. Staying inside and not having so many commitments gave me more time to learn new things and begin teaching what I love!

Before 2020, I mostly worked alone on personal projects, but this past year, many things changed and I became a content creator!

Without further ado, here are my highlights from 2020...

Made some online friends

Although I haven't been extremely social online, I found a few developers on Twitter, YouTube, and Discord who I look up to and would consider my new friends.

Here are just a few of the many awesome developers & content creators who I've connected with on social media:

• Catalin Pit
• James Q. Quick
• Francesco Cuilla
• Eddie Jaoude
• Max Programming
• CodeSTACKr
• Danny Thompson
• Eleftheria Batsou
• Tyler Potts
• Simon Høiberg

Check out their content! These are all amazing people I hope to get to know better in 2021!

YouTube

On May 31, 2020, I made my first real YouTube video which has since been unlisted due to the change in plans for my channel.

About a month later, I realized my channel could become a resource for people who want to learn programming.

On July 20, 2020, I made my first programming tutorial where you can hear me speak (before July 20 I only used background music).

I now have been teaching web development and other coding tips about once a week.

Since I started, I have made a total of 28 public tutorials and gained 786 subscribers!

Including my unlisted and public videos, I achieved over 104,000 views this year!

Check out my channel 👉 https://www.youtube.com/c/DevProTips

Twitter

Starting in September, I have been posting JavaScript tips and quizzes every week.

I also post any programming resources I find useful.

Check it out 👉 https://twitter.com/DenverCoder1

Dev.to and Hashnode

I only very recently started writing articles/blog posts (this is my 6th one). In 2020, my posts on DEV community have gotten 6800 views and 169 reactions.

One of my first articles even got featured on Hashnode!

Hacktoberfest

Hacktoberfest was a great event this year. I learned about contributing to open source projects and even made some of my own for others to contribute to.

Learning how to make a pull request on a public project was a very important skill I picked up and now I do it all the time!

GitHub

In 2020, I made 1220 commits, 50 pull requests, and opened 34 issues.

My open source projects received a total of 134 stars! ⭐

I contributed on GitHub every day from September 26 to December 17 making an 83-day streak. Hopefully, I can extend that this year! You can get this streak stats card for your profile at git.io/streak-stats!

My top open source projects of 2020

• LaTeX Gboard Dictionary - 74 stars
• GitHub Readme Streak Stats - 32 stars
• GitHub Readme YouTube Stats - 10 stars
• Unicode formatter - 4 stars

Helping Computer Science Students

As a Computer Science student finishing my degree, I had the chance to help other students who have been struggling with programming and math concepts.

In 2020, I spent over 90 hours tutoring other students.

New Programming Skills

I have learned many new things in 2020!

Here are a few programming topics I learned and practiced in 2020:

• Node.js
• Chrome Extensions
• Bootstrap and Material UI (I still prefer plain CSS though)
• C#
• Logical Programming (Prolog)
• Functional Programming
• Oracle Database Systems
• SQL, PL/SQL
• Building WordPress Plugins
• Interacting with WordPress Databases
• Introduction to Cybersecurity
• Software design patterns and UML
• OOP in Java
• Dynamic Programming and Memoization

Let me know what you're interested in learning in 2021!

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Conclusion

2020 was a great year for me and I hope 2021 will allow me to continue to help others learn!

Helping others is very rewarding and I'd recommend anyone who's considering it to give content creation a try.

Making the first video or first post is the hardest, but it becomes easier from there.

Interested in what I'm teaching?

You can find me on:

YouTube 📺 https://www.youtube.com/c/DevProTips

Twitter 🐦 https://twitter.com/DenverCoder1

- Jonah Lawrence