Maria Solano shares advice on how to leverage side projects for career development. She discusses how she took Udemy courses during the pandemic summer of 2020 which taught her real-world software development skills not learned in university. Solano recommends not just watching videos but following exercises, using your own code style, and understanding documentation to fully learn. Side projects allow exploring interests like web development, game development, or open source contributions to improve skills outside of coursework or work assignments. Sharing projects publicly can help careers by adding experience to CVs and profiles.

1. M
a
ri
a
Sol
a
no
https://www.m
a
ri
a
-sol-os.com/
Howtoleveragesideprojects

2. Whoisthisgirlanyway?
• Completed my undergrad in McGill
University (BSc of mathematics and
computer science).
• Currently a software engineer at
Microsoft, (TypeScript/JavaScript
tooling for Visual Studio).
• I take rubber duck debugging
seriously.
• I also have a cat, her name is
Ophelia.

3. “A side project is something you’re
willing to do for free, during your spare
time, and which will potentially won’t
result on anything beyond a bunch of
code in a GitHub repo”.

4. HowIgotstarted
• In the middle of a pandemic, no fancy summer internship.
• 4 months of binge-watching Udemy videos.
• Possibly the most enriching experience of my coding development.
Summer of 2020

5. WhatIlearnedfromit
• Learned so much about “real world” software development that no university
course had taught me.
• Allowed me to remember why I loved computer science.
• Great addition to my CV, and became a great topic for coding interviews.
• Next summer I was a Microsoft intern.

6. Don’t just w
a
tch the videos
• Follow the exercises.
• Use your own code style. Use
di
ff
erent libraries.
• Take your time on setting up your
environment. Coding with the right
tools makes a huge di
ff
erence.
• New function/API/tool? Look up
the documentation for it.
Understand the code.

7. Watchingvideosisn’tmything
• That’s
fi
ne. Then think of an app/website/IDE extension/something that you like
and that you feel is missing something. Then work on it.
• Is there a new programming language you want to learn? Write the coolest Hello
world program using it.
• Extend an existing university assignment or work deliverable.
• You don’t need to have a clear idea from the very beginning. Have a startup
mentality of creating an MVP and complete multiple iterations of it.

8. • Don’t want to work on an independent
project? No problem, try contributing to open
source.
• Don’t work on it if you don’t want to. Side
projects are about the development
process, not the end result.

9. Ramble
• My web dev b
a
by
• Rebuilt it from scr
a
tch m
a
ny times
• As I le
a
rned, I directly
a
pplied it

10. Ratón
• Pl
a
ying
a
round with g
a
me dev
• W
a
y more th
a
n just scripts: There’s
a
nim
a
tion,
a
sset cre
a
tion, AI
a
nd
ML…
• Before my current job, Unity w
a
s
my only experience with C#

11. Bragaboutit
• Share it on GitHub.
• Make a post about it on LinkedIn.
• Add it to your CV.
• Create a portfolio.

12. RecommendedResources
• React: https://www.udemy.com/course/react-the-complete-guide-incl-redux. In
general, I love the content from Max Schwarzmüller.
• Full stack web dev: https://www.udemy.com/course/the-web-developer-bootcamp.
This was the very
fi
rst Udemy course I took, and I loved how it covered the “big
picture” of full stack, from styling your frontend to writing a vanilla REST server.
• Game dev: https://www.udemy.com/course/unitycourse/. The courses from
GameDev.tv are all great!
• The bible: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/. Basically ANYTHING related to
JavaScript will be here, with great examples included!

13. exit(0);
Thankyou