Reflecting on where I’m at: 3/4 done with Coding bootcamp

Just a couple of reflections since I’m almost done with coding bootcamp in about a month or so!

A couple months ago, after I had just failed my I guess you can call it my “one-shot” for getting into tech as a self-taught developer, failed. I was sitting in the second floor of my house wondering what next steps I wanted to do next. After much reflection I ended up deciding, ‘Okay, I’m going to do a coding bootcamp’. Out of all the ones I applied to, I went with General Assembly’s Software Engineering Immersive.

I applied in April, got accepted right away, got approved for the Catalyst program, and I sat and waited until my first day in June.

Coming from a background of knowing Python, I thought learning vanilla JS would be easy. Once I got the basics down it was, when it came to learning about the DOM, AJAX, and axios, it went over my head. I began sitting in TA hours to get the extra help I needed so I wouldn’t fall behind. Fast forward a couple of months later, I can confidently manipulate the DOM, and use axios in some of the side projects I’ve done. Unfortunately, my CSS skills are incredibly lacking still, but if I were to look at my old projects when I did Udacity’s course, there is a large amount of improvement. Back then, I didn’t even know what flexbox was or how to make things responsive.

The second part of the course came around, and it was React. I attempted to teach myself React before joining bootcamp, only for it to crash and burn horribly. Back then, I was learning React via Class components, and for the course we were learning hooks which was the newest/biggest thing that was added to React about a year ago, which made everything a lot easier. Props went over my head, even now, I still have trouble understanding ‘props’, higher order functions like .map(), .filter(), .reduce(), etc were going over my head again and in fact sometimes it still does! At the end of the unit, I made a rhythm game locator, using a library that I didn’t even learn in class. My project idea was originally going to be something animal crossing related, but I’m moving that idea to P4 aka my capstone. I thought making a rhythm game finder was gonna be easy, but boy was I wrong. I was amazed at how I managed to be able to make it happen, thinking back at where I originally came from.

A week or so ago, I got into a fight with my dad in terms of my choices in careers. He sincerely believed that I shouldn’t be career changing and that I should go back to working in a lab in the food industry. It was one of the worst things I have ever heard him say to me in terms of my career change. He said I have no chance of becoming a software engineer against all the people with a computer science degree. I walked out of that conversation, having an even stronger resolve than I did.The following days, I spent it reaching out to alumni from GA making some connections and started fixing up my resumes and cover letters.

Now, I’m in unit 3 and project week for this course. This project we collaborated with the UX team along with some of our classmates in little groups. This project is a lot of fun for me, but I got paired up with some of the brightest people in my class and I feel really dumb compared to them and not to mentioned a little embarrassed when I end up asking for help . But again, I think about where I’ve come from and that I really shouldn’t be comparing myself to them.

After nearly 2 months of coding bootcamp, I can definitely say this.

• While I still say I’m a career changer going from food sci → software engineering. I can confidently say that I’m a software engineer now. I know I have so much more to learn especially when it comes to technical interviews, but I have a little bit more confidence now.
• I’m definitely a lot more confident in my ability to learn things pretty quickly, and a lot more confident in my coding skills.
• Networking is a pain, but it is unfortunately a necessity especially in this COVID world to get a job. I’m a lot more outgoing and willing to reach out to people now when it comes to these things.

So yeah, this entry was really just a way for me to reflect on how far I’ve come. It’s not much and its super messy, but its something I wanted to write for a while.