The first 3 weeks - The School of Code Bootcamp

On the 20th January I joined 23 other eager bootcampers for our first day on the School of Code bootcamp. I had intended on writing a blogpost each week but three weeks have flown by and here we are! I read lots of the SoC blogposts while I was researching the bootcamp and I really liked the format of Jaskaran Sarkaria's weekly blogs, so i'm pinching it!

What we've learnt so far

So, so, so much. We have gone through a fair amount of html & css. I've really enjoyed the CSS tasks as I love seeing what we're working on improve as we learn. We've learnt about the history of JavaScript, about arrays and their methods, objects, for & while loops, functions, different variables and their scope. We learnt about the DOM and how to use it to make changes to our webpages with JS. We learnt more about github and used it with our pair programming partner for an afternoon hackathon. Last week we learnt about APIs and used used fetch to get Kanye quotes and random dog pics into our sites! We began using node, npm and used express to create our own server. We learnt about object oriented programming, and at the end of week 3 we used get and post requests to display and update Pokemon data!

How I feel

The last three weeks have been brilliant and intense. I'm starting to get used to feeling the complete frustration of not being able to solve a problem. We had a couple of very hard days during the first two weeks and I was quite hard on myself which didn't help. Having spoken to past bootcampers, my mentor, other developers and my cohort pals, I'm definitely not alone in feeling quite lost sometimes and I'm getting to grips with knowing how to deal with the frustrations. It's important to remember we're still very new to everything and to have faith that things will be sinking in even when it might not feel like it. I am absolutely loving learning with the rest of our cohort. I've found their support invaluable and I've enjoyed helping others when I can. I am absolutely not missing spending my lunchtimes marking books, instead I've been enjoying social time and our daily walks around Digbeth. The School of Code bootcamp certainly has not disappointed at all so far. As well as the learning and code tasks it's been really helpful to have our daily standup recaps(including daily squats!) and we've had some brilliant guest speakers.

Where I'm at

I'm happy with how each day is going. I've gotten into a good rhythm with note-taking and coding along as we're taught. I feel like I'd be able to explain what most of the code we've come across does if I was shown it again, however I definitely would not be able to use it all if I was asked to. I'm enjoying our daily Codewar sessions. Most level 8KYU katas are doable although some are still fairly challenging.

Where I want to be

I'd like to continue to develop my confidence with JS on the front end. I've been going through notes and codewars at home but I think working on a project would be a better use of my time this week.

Really looking forward to this week. More back end and databases are coming up!