A Coder’s Journey Begins
I recently gave storytelling a shot creating a yt series that follows the journey of a first-year computer science student, who’s just starting to learn coding. The story explores the real struggles students face:
- Feeling lost with basic concepts
- Comparing themselves to peers
- Facing self-doubt and imposter syndrome
- And how, slowly, they begin to overcome it all
🎧 Note: The audio is in Hindi and currently focused on the Indian audience 😊.
Would love your thoughts on how I can improve or if you’d like more episodes around similar themes!
Here’s the link: A Coder’s Journey Begins
Let me know what you think 🙌
A brief of all parts 🎉
Hello, World…of Loneliness
Arjun, a shy computer science freshman, experiences a mix of awe and anxiety as he navigates the large campus and grapples with imposter syndrome. During a coding lab, he struggles with basic tasks like executing a “Hello, World!” program on his own machine, while his peers seem to effortlessly complete Python exercises. His anxiety peaks when his laptop crashes, displaying a “kernel panic” error, making him fear he has irreparably damaged his computer. Additionally, during a Data Structures and Algorithms (DSA) lecture, Arjun is hasited to answer a question about linked lists, further exacerbating his feelings of inadequacy.
However, in the next lab session, Arjun manages to successfully run the “Hello, World!” code. This small victory boosts his confidence, and he decides to spend more time in the lab to improve his coding skills.
Debugging Life
Arjun joins a study group but is initially hesitant to participate due to anxiety. They are assigned a project to build a chatbot. Arjun, motivated by Priya’s encouragement and the desire to impress her, agrees to participate in the chatbot competition. He starts coding a simple chatbot and feels confident. However, when the group meets to present their progress, Priya and Vikram showcase more advanced chatbots. Arjun, who has only created a basic if/else program, feels inadequate and realizes the challenge ahead. He spends the rest of the day contemplating how to proceed with limited coding knowledge.
Just Before the Push
Arjun first says nothing to Priya and Vikram, but during lunch, one by one, Vikram and Priya come to meet him and motivate him to work on the project. Priya tells him about ChatGPT. Arjun does some research on ChatGPT and decides to build an Anxiety Relief Bot. But he gets overwhelmed by the tech he needs to learn to build it. Then Priya’s message comes, and he decides again to build the app to impress her. He has a talk with Priya about how he is planning to build the chatbot. Priya appreciates him.After many hits and trials, Arjun somehow builds a simple chatbot using React, Flask, MongoDB, and OpenAI. But when he is pushing the code to GitHub, somehow his code is gone.
Arjun vs. Anxiety
Arjun, a shy and under-confident first-year student, builds a simple anxiety-relief chatbot for a college competition. He learns React, FastAPI, and OpenAI to complete the project. Just before submission, he mistakenly switches Git branches and thinks he lost all his code — but his friend Vikram helps recover it.
On demo day, Arjun feels nervous as he watches others give impressive presentations. When it’s his turn, he struggles at first but slowly gains confidence and completes the demo. Though he doesn’t win any award, he earns appreciation for his effort. Supported by friends, Arjun feels motivated to continue learning and growing.
Bye 👋 …..
