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Matt Van Itallie for Sema

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Hey CodeLand! Sema Software would love to connect and talk about your accomplishments ⭐

Hi CodeLand!

I'm Matt Van Itallie — the founder and CEO of Sema Software. I'm proud that Sema is a sponsor of CodeLand this year and I'm excited to connect over our shared love of coding.

If you haven't heard of us before, Sema is a software company obsessed with code quality and helping developers grow their skills and advance their careers.

We have a free code review assistant/developer portfolio tool now available for GitHub. You can find it here


Let's Talk About Brag Books!

I'm thrilled to be giving a Lighting Talk at CodeLand 2022 on creating a "brag book" — also known as an accomplishment journal.

I hope you'll tune in and then consider creating a brag book for yourself! I truly believe they can equip early-career software developers to reflect on and explain what they've learned and what they've achieved at work or in school. This process can be as important for career advancement and personal growth as carrying out the work itself!

You can learn more about how to create a brag book and find free Google doc templates here

What's next?

  1. I'd love to hear from you. Reply in the comments with questions or examples about building your own Accomplishment Journal.

  2. We're hosting a Developer Portfolio competition this summer with prizes from our sweet merch store. Sign up here if you'd like to be informed of this contest and participate.

  3. You and your team are welcome to use our code review tool. Sign up on the website or send us an email.

All of us at Sema are wishing you a great experience at CodeLand this year. 🌈


Want to sign up for a custom demo, free licenses, a free code review, or for our developer portfolio tool? Share your contact info with us using this form.

Top comments (35)

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jolenekearse profile image
Jolene Kearse

Great talk! I loved the idea of an accomplishment journal. I was working on a blog post about a project and had to 'search' my various notes to remind myself. This included Twitter posts and my daily log of activities, where I keep track of what I did in my learning and solutions I found. It gave me such a confidence boost to see all I'd accomplished. We often forget, so keeping all our accomplishments in one place is a way to give ourselves' pats on the back!

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mattvanitallie profile image
Matt Van Itallie

amazing amazing Jolene!!!

here's a blog post with some templates if you want some more inspiration

keep it up and thank you for sharing!!!!

semasoftware.com/blog/how-to-build...

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canlitvizle profile image
Canlitv

Hi Matt!

Thanks for sharing this fantastic resource! I’m really excited about the concept of a "brag book" or accomplishment journal. As someone who’s always looking for ways to reflect on and showcase my work, I can see how this could be a game-changer, especially for early-career developers.

In the world of coding, much like canlı tv, it’s all about being able to adapt, think on your feet, and showcase your best moments under pressure. Just as a live broadcast captures the highlights of a game or show, a brag book can highlight our coding achievements and growth over time. I love the idea of having something tangible to reflect on, just like reviewing a great match or show!

The Developer Portfolio competition sounds like a great opportunity to put these brag books into action. I’m definitely considering signing up, and I’ll be tuning in to your talk at CodeLand 2022 to get more insights.

Looking forward to seeing more from Sema and how this tool can help us all level up in our careers. 🌟

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simarpreetsingh019 profile image
Simarpreet Singh

Sema is such a welcoming community, such humble people like mattvanitallie building and supporting opensource. A must try thing for all developers. if you encounter some problem or suggestions, do follow up with us on discord at discord.gg/pKP87qHA to connect with sema community

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mattvanitallie profile image
Matt Van Itallie

honored. Thank you Simarpreet, I am so glad you are a member of our community!!!

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deesclouds profile image
Dee {he | they} • Edited

I presently do not keep an Accomplishment Journal.

I'm glad to incorporate utilizing Sema to keep track of my successes, which will gradually alleviate some of the impostor mentality.

It would also help me keep track of all the new things I've learnt and continue to learn on this journey.

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mattvanitallie profile image
Matt Van Itallie

amazing! We'd love to help you.

You can sign up for free with your GitHub log in at semasoftware.com/

and I will personally answer any of your questions or give you a custom demo (same for all the awesome folks at CodeLand)-- write me anytime at mvi@semasoftware.com

Enjoy!

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gigiboop profile image
gigi-boop

I really love the idea of an accomplishment journal.
I don't think I've ever believed in myself so much since I've been learning web development. For my whole life, I didn't think I could really be good at anything. And I've had moments in my learning journey when I felt the weight of that lack of belief in myself because I was having trouble understanding a concept or becoming overwhelmed by how much more there still is for me to learn. But when I stop and look at where I am and what I know now versus where I started, suddenly I can't deny my own ability to grow anymore. And the good, fuzzy feelings that brings motivates me to grow even more! It's a dopamine high, basically.
So I think keeping an accomplishment journal is a great idea because it would facilitate that.
Um, thank you for coming to my TED talk lol.

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mattvanitallie profile image
Matt Van Itallie

Amazing! I believe in you!!!

more importantly-- the data about your journey means you have to be honest with yourself, i.e. that you HAVE learned a lot, and not too self-critical.

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gigiboop profile image
gigi-boop

:D

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kingasix profile image
Jeffrey ‘King the Asix’ Willis

Just heard the lighting talk and this is something I need in my journey. I am very hard on myself since I am not where I want to be and because of this it is easy to overlook my many accomplishments. Definitely going to looking into starting a brag book and also looking forward to the portfolio competition.

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mattvanitallie profile image
Matt Van Itallie

terrific! here's more on the Accomplishment Journal including free google templates -- semasoftware.com/blog/how-to-build...

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kingasix profile image
Jeffrey ‘King the Asix’ Willis

Thank you!

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terabytetiger profile image
Tyler V. (he/him)

I find the hardest part of an accomplishment journal is to identify accomplishments 😅 It's so easy to brush off what you already know how to do as easy and not consider how much effort went toward developing your skills to the point you're able to do something!

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mattvanitallie profile image
Matt Van Itallie

totally agree

one trick could be to organize your accomplishments around:

  1. what you've learned
  2. what you've taught
  3. what the TEAM has accomplished (just be sure to acknowledge your contribution, too)
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mayankzz profile image
Mayank Pawar

Great work as always by Matt , Perfectly explained everything in detail and love the way that our community is growing more and more daily and encouraging about a lot of effective and efficient things in tech , specially open source and its contributions. From helping people to start from scratch to helping them build their solid developer portfolio and various other practices are just really amazing! & so helpful. All the thanks to Sema and all the community members behind it. I've been member of Sema since a while now and really appreciate the way of guiding and solving issues in person and Yes , I do write my Developer Diary for most of the solutions, Handy tricks and links to resources. Thank you once again to Sema and Codeland for this great work to empower communities & developers. Have a very good day!

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mattvanitallie profile image
Matt Van Itallie

amazing, thank you Lavish for the shout out! If you ever want to post examples on socials, please @ me or Sema (@vanitallie_matt and @semasoftware1) and we'll celebrate it!

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tsbrun profile image
Anya Brun

I don’t have a journal specifically for accomplishments, but I do maintain a developer journal where I write about my projects—things like errors that came up and how I solved them, concepts I learned more about, what I want to improve on next time. It’s really helped me learn a lot, especially since talking and writing notes is how I process and absorb information. Making a Brag Book sounds like a great idea and I’ll definitely check out your templates! Thanks for sponsoring the conference; it’s been awesome 😊

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mattvanitallie profile image
Matt Van Itallie

Anya that is wonderful and exactly the spirit-- growth as well as accomplishments. keep it up!!! Here are some tips that could be helpful, enjoy-- semasoftware.com/blog/how-to-build...

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christopheraaron_ profile image
Christopher Aaron

Wish the lightning talk was longer! 😆 But definitely got my attention! The concept of having an Accomplishment Journal / Brag Book sounds like the best solution to combat Imposter Syndrome; something I feel every developer struggles with. Thank you, Matt, for sharing!

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mattvanitallie profile image
Matt Van Itallie

thanks Aaron! here's more if you're curious-- semasoftware.com/blog/how-to-build...

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moonshoeskelly profile image
moonshoeskelly

Very cool tool you've created. I want to try it out for sure.

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mattvanitallie profile image
Matt Van Itallie

wonderful-- you can sign up for free at semasoftware.com/

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kithminiii profile image
Kithmini

Woah.So excited to participate your Developer Portfolio competition🤩​🙊​

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mattvanitallie profile image
Matt Van Itallie

thank you! please sign up so we can let you know when it's ready

right now the Portfolio works, but your team has to be using our free GitHub plug in for codereviews to have any data...

soon you'll be able to use it on any GitHub repos, starting with OpenSource, even if you haven't used the plug in

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mattvanitallie profile image
Matt Van Itallie

hi everyone!!! so excited to be here

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goblinbrooke profile image
brooke

LOVE the idea of a brag book!! Thank you for this.

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mattvanitallie profile image
Matt Van Itallie

thank you! would love to celebrate your successes and growth!!!

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ceciliapina profile image
ceciliapina

Excited to learn more about the Brag Book. As a new developer (and to tech), I'm looking for ways to document my work/learning, so this is a great idea.

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mattvanitallie profile image
Matt Van Itallie

great!

semasoftware.com/blog/how-to-build... is a link to the longer explanation along with free google templates you can use to build it

and we have a free github extension you can use to create one too-- learn more or sign up at semasoftware.com/

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hatricia profile image
Hattie

Can't wait to hear this talk, what a nice idea, kind of like those posts you see of artists posting their work from a year before and then their art now and you can see the improvement.

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mattvanitallie profile image
Matt Van Itallie

100% it-- exactly!!!