So you learned how to code…

… but what should you focus on next?

Whether you taught yourself through online courses, tinkering, and programming books over the course of years or went through an immersive software engineering bootcamp in just a few short months, you’re gonna get to the point where you have basic proficiency but aren’t entirely sure what next steps to take. Build large-scale projects to deploy? Mess around with a bunch of smaller programs to add a bigger variety of technologies to your repertoire? Work through data structure courses and leetcode until your eyes bleed?

The answer is yes.

Most coding bootcamps equip you with an extensive roadmap on how to land a job after completing the program, but I’ve found what’s often missing is detailed advice on what to focus on for your post-grad studies, and I must assume that’s by design. Programming is inherently exploratory and what makes a great programmer is the ability and willingness to jump into the deep end of an unlit pool at night and just start swimming. Since graduation, I have done a lot of different things to build out the foundations of my technical expertise: solo work on a simple portfolio page for myself (#branding), pair programming with fellow grads through challenging Leetcode problems, onboarding to a friend’s attempt to build a better (read prettier, more secure, and…