My first ten weeks at Lambda School

Last week, I completed my tenth week of Lambda School's Full Stack Web Engineering and Computer Science course. That means I'm now a third of the way through the 30-week, full-time program.

I want to take stock of what I've learned and accomplished in that time, not only for myself but for anyone considering applying to Lambda School. While my experience is just one of many, I hope this will give you some insight into what one can expect from the program.

What brought me to Lambda School

In July 2017, I decided I wanted to make a career change into web development. My schedule at that time was unpredictable (I was freelancing as an event designer and scenic artist/muralist), so I taught myself the basics when I had time. Since it was difficult to plan in advance, sometimes weeks would pass between study sessions.

It was a slow process, and I knew I needed to learn a lot more if I wanted to become a professional developer any time soon. I applied and was accepted to Lambda School in June 2018, and I began learning with the November 2018 cohort.

Now, ten weeks into full-time studying and practice, I'm amazed at what I've been able to quite literally cram into my brain!

The first five weeks: deep dive into fundamentals

Weeks 1-4 were all about web development fundamentals: Semantic HTML, vanilla and pre-processed CSS, responsive design, the essential concepts of Javascript (including closure, callback functions, higher order functions like .map() and .reduce(), prototypes, components, and DOM manipulation), and version control. By the end of the fourth week I had built nearly twenty small projects.

Every fifth week at Lambda School is Build Week, where we spend four days with a small team of students from different cohorts building out a more robust project. Students who have just completed the first four weeks of the course assume the role of UI Developer for the Build Week project.

I built out a fully-responsive landing page for a product called Stylogue, a web app that connects cosplayers and stylists using an Instagram-like image feed. I also designed the layout and visuals for the page, as we did not have a UX design student on the project with us. You can check out my work here: Stylogue

Overall, I felt comfortable with the material taught in the first five weeks. Lambda's pre-course material provided a great foundation and all of my self-taught topics focused on these fundamentals.

If you're starting at Lambda soon, I highly recommend studying as much as you can before the course. You'll be fine if you don't, but it will give you more time to let the concepts and put you ahead of the curve.

Lambda's Winter Hackathon

Twice a year, Lambda School throws an option 48-hour hackathon during semi-annual breaks from class. With the way that Lambda is structured, any student should be able to experience at least one hackathon during their time there.

I participated in the winter hackathon during the first week of 2019, and hopped onto a financial project as a UI developer. My team and I ended up creating Compound, a web app that visualizes expected future earnings for your current job as well as potential future earnings after Lambda School (or any salary increase).

The next five weeks: React and Redux

React fundamentals were covered within the first couple days of the 5-week unit. We also covered the React component lifecycle, utilizing higher order components, CSS-in-JS, React Router, CRUD operations using axios, middleware, and state management using Redux.

Five weeks ago, if I saw that list of React-related topics above, I couldn't have told you what any of them were. Now I know how to utilize them to make a conditionally rendered single page application.

The project I worked on as a Front-End Architect during the React Build Week was a digital tipping app that directly connects service workers and patrons. I'm not quite ready to share it yet because I want to add some additional features and polish it even further, but building it out was a fun, educational, frustrating, and humbling experience all at once.

My thoughts

I'm astonished at the breadth and depth of the concepts Lambda has introduced and taught, and what additional programming problems I've been able to solve with that new knowledge.

I appreciate that Lambda School doesn't hand-hold: I've had to solve a lot of coding problems on my own or with the help of my fellow students, but there are plenty of people standing by to push me in the right direction (project managers, section leads, instructors) if needed. It's been a great experience in learning how to learn and problem-solve.

So, after only ten weeks, am I an expert in front-end development? Definitely not. If my React Build Week taught me anything, it's this: I've learned a lot about React and can build things with it, but there's still plenty I don't know. Lambda provides a solid foundation for all topics covered that make me hire-able, and I'm going to keep teaching myself new, advanced concepts with every new project.

What's next?

Earlier today I began the back-end engineering portion of the program. Aside from programming alongside a back-end student during the React Build Week, all of the material is 100% new to me.

The next time I write a recap after week 20, I'll have finished the back-end portion as well as Lambda Labs, where I will spend 5 weeks building my capstone project with a team of students from my cohort. I'm so excited to see where this takes me, and how much more knowledge and experience I'll have in the next 10 weeks.

Thank you for reading! Want to read recaps written by other students? Check these out:

• "Lambda School and New Beginnings" by Nathan Thomas
• "We're officially full-stack developers!" by Adam Hinckley
• "15 weeks into my UX Design Learning Journey at Lambda School…" by OLU Durojaiye

And for the latest on Lambda School, keep tabs on their blog (or Twitter!).