The Cost of Disconnect: My Coding Skills Decline after a Long Break📉

Introduction

For the last 2 months, I faced a lot of inconsistency and took many breaks from coding for several reasons. All these breaks took me into so negative curve, and I faced a lot of problems in gaining back that flow. In this blog, I gonna discuss how it affected me, what are the takeaways and other advice. 🚀

Reasons for the Break

It was since last week of September, I had to go out of the station for my Mother's health checkup, it was about a week I didn't code. Then came the Durga Puja, hardly did I code in those 5 days. And then, after puja itself a family trip to Darjeeling was already booked earlier, so there went again 10 days. As November approached, the academic Pressure began, first the lab exams and then the end sem exams, uffff so many days it had been, hardly giving time to code. I accept that it was my fault and I could have reduced the breaks by compromising the other side but I was unaware of the consequences. 🗓️

Initial Impact on Skills and Losses

Now it was November when it began to get the kick. I started feeling that this time the breaks were too much, I saw my skill decreasing, and my long sitting hours capacity reduced a lot. After going through the project I was doing before taking the breaks, I hardly remember the design patterns of the database schemas. Pretty hard time for me. But it was too late, I had my lab exams and end-sem exams on my hands, and I had to prepare for those as well. It was a very bad situation for me. 📉

Reflection on the Break

I am not saying that I didn't enjoy the breaks, during the Durga Puja I went to hang out almost every day with my friends and family. Then the Darjeeling trip was just fantastic (until an incident happened at last, iykyk!). But after going through the consequences, I feel I should have compromised there and given more time to code. 🤔

Challenges of Restarting/Rebuilding the Skills

When it was all over, I started again, at the beginning I felt so overwhelmed that I had to begin from scratch. Building again from scratch, gave me confidence gradually. Gradually I increased my sitting hours and I had to be more determined as well. Keeping in mind that the next year is my placement season and the current job market is so volatile, I built up some determination and discipline. 💪

Learning from the Experience and Advice for Others

After having all these worse experiences, it is clear to me that never ever take so many long breaks in coding. The learning curve of coding is just like a stack, piling up gradually and once you take a long break the stack breaks and you have to build the stack from scratch. Even I heard of this advice of not taking long breaks in coding but there is a saying that "You'll never understand until it happens to you". So everyone please learn from others' experience and don't make such mistakes if you really want a career in this domain. 🛑

I hope this post will help everyone on their coding journey, and also don't forget to share this blog with your friends if you really like it. Do comment if you have also faced these types of situations and how you have overcome them. 💬