Hey fellow devs! πŸ‘‹

I'm a software engineer looking to level up my skills and share my learning journey. After reading some great advice on becoming a more impactful developer, I've decided to document my progress daily here on dev.to to stay accountable and hopefully help others along the way.

The Plan

I'm focusing on building fundamentals and solving practical problems that showcase multiple skills at once. Here's what I'll be working on:

Core Projects

  1. Implement a Trie in Go

    • While relatively straightforward, tries are versatile data structures used in autocomplete, spell-checkers, and IP routing
    • Will help me practice Go and efficient memory usage

  2. Design and Build a URL Shortener Service

    • Complete with a REST API, database persistence, and basic analytics
    • Will cover web development, database design, and system architecture

  3. Implementing Advanced Data Structures

    • B-trees for database indexing
    • Concurrent hash maps with lock striping
    • Bloom filters for efficient set membership testing
    • Skip lists for fast search within ordered data

  4. Distributed Systems Mini-Projects

    • Build a simple distributed key-value store with consistency guarantees
    • Implement a leader election algorithm (Raft consensus)
    • Create a basic load balancer with different strategies

  5. Performance Engineering

    • Benchmark different data structures and algorithms
    • Profile and optimize Go code using pprof
    • Implement various concurrency patterns (worker pools, fan-out/fan-in)

  6. Full-Stack Application

    • Build a real-time collaborative editor using WebSockets
    • Implement JWT authentication and authorization
    • Deploy using Docker and Kubernetes

Why This Approach?

I believe becoming a "10x developer" isn't about typing fasterβ€”it's about making better decisions, understanding fundamentals deeply, and building systems that scale. These projects cover:

  • Data structures and algorithms
  • System design and architecture
  • Performance optimization
  • Testing and reliability
  • DevOps and deployment

How I'll Track Progress

For each project, I'll:

  • Post daily updates with code snippets and learnings
  • Share benchmarks and performance metrics
  • Discuss design decisions and trade-offs
  • Include diagrams for system architecture

Let's Connect!

I'd love to hear your thoughts:

  • Are there other projects you'd recommend for becoming a more effective developer?
  • Have you implemented any of these data structures or systems in Go?
  • Any particular resources you've found helpful for advanced Go development?

Follow along as I document this journey, and let's learn together!

#programming #datastructures #systemdesign #learneveryday