My first goal for 2022 was to complete CS50s web programming course, today after 11 days, I quit.

I'll start with the reason I took this course; I wanted to expand on my knowledge of web programming (I have done a course on web development using javascript), I wanted to add to my portfolio, I wanted to have another certificate under my belt, and I was very happy with what I had learned in CS50x - so this seemed like the appropriate next step.

The reason I quit? There are multiple.

Going through the projects in CS50 web, they all use the same backend framework Django. There are such small number of jobs in my country (New Zealand) which uses django as their backend framework. There are at least 10x more job postings for either node.js, .NET or PHP. As much as I like python, there is not a big job market for python web development in New Zealand.

Second, what I've read/heard from recruiters is that portfolio is king. Certifications mean nothing if you can't back it up with a portfolio displaying what you can do. So instead of spending my time studying and building projects in a framework that is not likely to be relevant to my job search, I would be better off building projects in what I know and what is more likely to get me a job.

Third, it's better to be great in one thing than mediocre in many. I have studied MERN stack and have been able to build a full stack website using it, though I still feel like there is a lot of room for improvement. Instead of starting something brand new, I want to get really good at what I've already started.

So what is my plan now? I'm going to build a full-stack website using SERN stack. These are among the most relevant in my country. I'm gonna continue to learn a bit of C# on the side so that once I am confident in my javascript stack, I can start with .NET.

It sucks to have to quit something, but looking at the options available to me and what I want to achieve, this is the best decision.