The difference 3 months of daily commits made in my GitHub graph

I started this coding bootcamp in January and my GitHub profile was just a blank grid for the first 6 weeks. Then I forced myself to push something every single day even if it was just fixing a typo in my README file. Now my graph is totally green and i actually got a recruiter from a company in Austin message me about a junior dev role. Has anyone else seen that kind of before and after from just showing up every day?

3 comments

3 Comments

ruby45027d ago

Hold up, I gotta respectfully disagree here. Daily commits look good on the graph but they don't prove you can actually build real software. I've seen plenty of people with green squares who just fix typos or update package files every day. The recruiter might have messaged you because of the bootcamp or because your profile showed consistent activity, not because you pushed code daily. What really matters is if you can explain your projects and solve actual problems in an interview. What kind of projects did you actually build during that time?

oliviat1727d ago

Wait, isn't the whole point of a daily commit streak that it builds consistency and discipline though? @ruby450 I get what you're saying about daily commits not automatically meaning good code, but you're kind of missing how that habit changes things over time. When you show up every day even for tiny fixes, you start thinking about your code more often and catching little things you wouldn't otherwise. That recruiter almost definitely noticed the green graph alongside the bootcamp on their resume - recruiters eat that stuff up because it shows they stuck with it. The real test is whether they can talk through their projects in an interview, which is totally separate from the daily commit thing. It's not about daily commits proving you're a senior dev overnight, it's about building the muscle memory to keep coding when it's not fun anymore.

drewsullivan26d ago

Spent a summer doing the same thing after my bootcamp. @ruby450 I get the skepticism about empty commits, but for me it was more about refactoring old projects or adding little features I'd skipped. Like one week I just wrote better error messages and cleaned up my console logs. That alone made me look at my code differently and fixed a bug I'd been ignoring for months. The green graph got me my first interview at a startup too. But you're right that it's not the whole story - I had to actually talk through my garbage sorting app and explain why I chose certain patterns. The streak just got my foot in the door.