Growing with Udacity…
Hello, I am Shubham Prakash and I am pleased to see you are here to know a bit about me. First, let me tell you a bit about my background-
I spent my childhood at Garhara (It is in Begusarai district, Bihar) and did my primary schooling there in Kendriya Vidyalaya, Garhara.
Currently I am a first year student of B.Tech in Information Technology at Haldia Institute of Technology, WB, India.
I love Computer Programming, Software development, Technology and I want to become a software engineer. But It’s a matter of fact that initially, I was not so interested in modern technology rather I was more leaned toward science and research stuff. I was so interested in Science that I had set up a small laboratory at my home itself, consisting of some chemicals, laboratory equipment, and glassware along with a microscope. I used to spend all of my pocket money on those kinds of stuff.
Also, after a couple of months, seeing my interests in that field, my dad gave me my own personal microscope on my birthday. It was a great day for me and that boosted me toward my goal of being a scientist (Great..! Huh?).
INSPIRATION: (INTEREST IN PROGRAMMING AND TECHNOLOGY)-
When I was in class 10th my Uncle bought a Windows XP desktop at home (Yippee!!) which attracted my attention toward itself.
It was this day when I headed toward the world of computers and Technology. I used to play a lot of games on my computer and it was all about fun. One day I found a book on Microsoft DOS in my store room ( I don’t know who used to study MS-DOS those days in my family but I think perhaps it used to be in the course if you had to have a degree in basic computer courses like DCA etc… whatever…) coming to my story, on that day I got to know that how we can write codes and program a computer to do a specific job. This was really very fascinating for me and I got attracted to that at once.
However, I could not learn any code from that book as it was very complicated but still I could develop an interest in programming from that. I started to search all about programming and computers’ software on the web.
This became my hobby which got boosted in class XI when my dream of learning computer program became true because of my computer teacher Rishi Raman who insisted me to take Computer Science (Insisted? huh?), I know it sounds weird but its true that in spite of having so much interest in this field I thought of choosing Hindi as my fifth subject in class 11 as I was a bit scared of losing marks (as other students to say) but thanks to my CS teacher who cleared my fear of loosing marks in CS.
That way I opted CS as my fifth subject. Rishi Raman sir was an incredible teacher and we had a lot of fun in learning code because of the unique way of his teaching style. I learned the basics of computers and programming languages like C and C++, MySQL etc.
I also love playing with Operating systems especially those amazing Linux distros and always wish to use all kinds of them available out there.
Talking about the tech, Laptops, PCs, mobiles, and tablets etc. attract my attention a lot. I love these small powerful gadgets which makes our life easy.
I got my first smartphone when I was 13 which was Nokia Lumia 520 running Windows Phone 8. Then I got Lumia 620 with Windows 10 and now I’m using Samsung galaxy J5. My first and current Laptop is DELL INSPIRON 15 (with Linux Mint KDE rocking on it). I wish to have MacBook, iPhone and other Apple product. Waiting for that day; Everyone dreams about it. Right? Me too ;)
KNOWLEDGE: (LEARNING RESOURCES)-
Online tutorials helped a lot to get me started with programming. I used many of them like Udacity, Codecademy, MDN, Khan Academy, Codechef and a couple of awesome YouTube channels etc. where I was able to learn new skills and enhance my knowledge for free of cost. I learned C, C++, database (MySQL), the basics of web development- HTML, CSS, javascript, jquery; Linux, Bash scripting basics, git basics and a lot more.
JOURNEY AND EXPERIENCE WITH UDACITY —
One day I was scrolling my Facebook news-feed and encountered an add saying about Google India reskilling Scholarship program. I filled the form and fortunately got selected for this. I was selected for the front-end web developer course. I learned HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, git etc. and still learning from it. Talking about my personal experience, I’m enjoying a lot here. It is an amazing platform containing information-rich tutorial videos, notes, quizzes and puzzles which helps a lot in the learning process. It also has an amazing forum where I can ask questions and even help other people. I also started with a slack work-space where I met a lot of enthusiastic students learning the same thing together. I loved the way of learning and growing together.
The most amazing part of learning here is that we also get chance to learn from the people who are already working in the tech giant companies like Google etc. For me the best part in the learning process is working on the projects. We are working together on collaborative projects on GitHub. I learn even better by directly working on the projects because I face real world problems there and have to figure out the solutions by myself.
At the last of my story, I would like to thank Udacity and Google for providing me this opportunity to learn and live my dream.
Thanks :)
