This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Congo Musah
When I look back at my developer journey this year, it hasn’t exactly gone as I planned. My roadmap was ambitious, but along the way I’ve realized something important — growth is not a straight line. It’s messy, full of detours, but also full of lessons that stick with you.
My Time with jQuery
“For the past few months, I’ve been working a lot with jQuery and AJAX. Some people may see them as old tools, but for me, they’ve been like a foundation — a way to understand how the web really works. Making dynamic requests, fetching data without refreshing the page, manipulating the DOM — it felt powerful. Almost like React, in its own way. The more I worked with jQuery, the more I noticed how it gave me a small taste of what React tries to solve at a bigger scale.”
A Taste of Real-World Challenges
“At the same time, I’ve been pushing myself to go beyond tutorials. I started integrating third-party authentications — TikTok, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Discord. Real apps, real users, real logins. And trust me, it wasn’t always smooth. Every provider had its quirks, their own OAuth flow, their own way of handling tokens. But through those struggles, I learned something priceless — building for real people is never as simple as the documentation makes it look. It’s in the debugging, the failed requests, the late-night fixes, that I started to feel like a real software engineer.”
My Side Path with Cursor
“And because I didn’t want to lose momentum, I started a personal project with Cursor. Not something big, but enough to keep me productive, to keep my mind sharp, and to remind myself that every small step builds my skillset. Sometimes it wasn’t about finishing the project — it was about staying consistent, staying engaged with the tech, and adopting myself to tools that can shape the future of my career.”
Growth Is Not Linear
“If I’m being honest, my roadmap didn’t unfold the way I drew it up at the start of the year. I thought I’d be deep into Ml and flutter by now, maybe even shipping production-ready apps. Instead, I found myself rediscovering jQuery, battling OAuth integrations, and tinkering with side projects. But looking back, I see that’s okay. Growth is not linear. Every tool I touched, every bug I fixed, every little project I started — they’re all threads weaving together into the developer I’m becoming.”
“So, where do I go from here? Maybe ML, maybe deeper into backend systems, maybe something else entirely. What I know is this — the journey matters more than the roadmap. Because even if it doesn’t go exactly as planned, every detour teaches you something new. And that’s how I know I’m still growing, one line of code at a time.”
Let’s get in touch at https://congodev.netlify.app
This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Congo Musah