This week's Codealike Achiever is Adam Ross DeStafeno, our Codealike Code Maestro (which is the award based on total Coding Hours) winner for January! Adam is a gifted coder from the United States who has been programming for just a year and a half! Winning this award is a sign of impressive progress for someone so new to coding. For his achievement, we spoke about his background and his experience with Torc and Codealike.
Tell me about your background before Torc.
Well, I've not been in the computer programming world for too long, it’s been about a year and a half since I started coding. My father works as a cybersecurity professional and had been telling me for years I’d enjoy coding, but at the time it didn’t seem like something I would be into. Finally he was able to get me to try my hand at making a hello world program and that’s how it all started. At first, I mainly just started dabbling with it and it turned out to be something that I really liked. Shortly after, I ended up enrolling in a Java master course from Karpado to learn the basics and have since been practicing and continuing to learn by developing utilities to solve my personal computing problems and further researching related interests, such as working with LLMs, checking out and learning about unique libraries, new frameworks, new languages, ect. I ended up enjoying coding so much that now, a year and a half later, I’ve decided I want to turn my hobby into my profession and am trying to find my way into the field.
How does Torc’s platform and community differ from other remote work opportunities you've experienced?
To be honest, I haven't had much experience in using other remote work opportunities or services. In my head my goal was to refine my skills to a respectable and competitive level before I started entering the job market, and after finally feeling that I had met that goal, made the first step towards turning my hobby into a profession by creating my Torc account.
For someone who’s only been coding for a year and a half, it’s quite impressive that you’ve won this award, it’s a good sign of progress!
Thanks, I appreciate that! It’s amazing that Torc is here to acknowledge and try to promote those who are striving to improve their skills. It's been a journey of personal perseverance, maintaining focus, and embracing the reality that there's always more to learn. I’m enthusiastic for the future and the opportunities it may bring.
What future initiatives or features are you most excited about within the Torc ecosystem?
Definitely the refined job searches, the specialized feed of what would be relevant for the roles, and maybe deeper interaction between the talent and employer entities.
Can you discuss a time when Torc’s resources or community helped you overcome a professional challenge?
Not yet. But, you know, I'm sure before too long, I'll be able to.
How has Codealike impacted your daily coding routine?
Codealike has significantly impacted my daily coding routine by providing me with valuable insights into how I spend my time while coding. By tracking my time spent on various activities such as coding, debugging, and web surfing, Codealike helps me to identify areas where I can improve my productivity.
Prior to using Codealike, I pretty much just coded whenever without much thought as to when or for how long; I wasn’t very mindful of how I was spending my time or the amount of coding I was doing per day/week/month. Once I started using Codealike it immediately brought to my attention the flaws in my coding routines and that I was not coding nearly as much as I thought I was in the grand scheme of things. Being able to visually model how I was spending my time allowed me to start creating a defined regime to start balancing the excessive time spent web browsing or being “sudo-productive” off with the lack of time spent coding.
For instance, one of the biggest examples is if I notice that I've been spending an excessive amount of time researching a related topic during a coding session, I'll make a conscious effort to minimize the time spent researching and focus more on coding. This has helped me see through my “sudo-productive” time to be more productive and efficient in my coding workflow and output.
Can you share a specific feature or a specific feature of Codealike that significantly improved your productivity?
The Codealike web extension has given me insights on how I spend my time on the web. I have been using Hyperskill to learn and practice coding quite frequently here recently. Without the web extension (or if I was using another time keeping service) the time spent on Hyperskill would blend in with the time spent on the web and would appear as wasteful time. Luckily, Codealike’s web extension recognizes the website and is able to separate the session in Hyperskill from the non productive web time, allowing me to more accurately assess my sessions.
How did tracking your coding activity with Codealike help you identify areas for improvements?
I needed to code a little bit more on the weekends. It is nice having that spread of information in front of you because it helps you to keep up with whether you're doing the amount that you should be doing, no matter how it's spread.
Why would you recommend code like to other developers?
The fact that it's integrated with Torc is like a win-win, two birds one stone situation. And again, the metrics are great. The interface itself just feels a lot more complete and robust than some of the other software that’s out there. I can’t say I’ve found myself needing a feature from Codealike that it doesn’t already offer.
How do you plan to leverage the insights gained from code like for future projects?
I plan on using it to ensure that I’m not spending too much time on one project or falling into a time-sink trying one file to make one thing perfect, just being mindful of how time is being spent and making sure the right amount of time is being spent on each task.
How has Codealike influenced your approach to time management and focus while coding?
Again, it always helps to keep something in the back of your mind, that what you're doing needs to be on task, or oriented, and get some type of progress in some way. It keeps me mindful that the time I spend on my computer should be ordered and has developed an internal sense of keeping track of my coding subconsciously. I know sometimes I'll be getting into coding and come across a new framework or methodology that interests me and then get lost in researching it, it’s definitely helpful with minimizing that.
Adam was a great interview subject and a good contrast to our previous two interviewees, Mariusz and Andres, as he has been working as a coder for a much shorter amount of time. It’s great to see Codealike having such a positive impact on the work of both experienced coders as well those newer to the industry. Adam has achieved a lot in a relatively short space of time and we look forward to seeing what he’ll achieve next!
