Today marked the beginning of my attempt to start a career as a developer.
The day started with introductions of all of our instructors and classmates. Some classic “My name is Matthew and my favorite movie is Toy Story” announcements were followed by working on group algorithms. Oddly, we were not tested on any of the algorithms I was drilling the night before.

We worked our way quickly through the HTML materials after a lecture on basic HTML practices and an explanation of how the internet works. I enjoy learning more about the fundamentals of the web and could see that information as being useful.

After that we worked on an assignment to create a fake blog using the HTML we’ve been going over. I had a little fun adding some personal touches to mine.

I had a chunk of issues with my code when I tried to validate it. After some trial and error I managed to work them all out and cleaned up my code. This was very gratifying, even if it looks trivial.

After this we got started with the CSS track. This isn’t the focus until tomorrow, but it seemed like a good idea to get ahead of it. For some reason I had trouble focusing on what I was reading for the material. After re-reading for a bit, I got started on the next project. This supplied us with an image of a layout that we had to recreate using some sample code. This took a bit longer than I would have liked, so I may re-visit that assignment soon.

That pretty much sums up my first day. My fellow cohort members seemed nice and so did the instructors. I look forward to seeing what I can create soon.

Thanks for stopping by.

4/15/2016

Tomorrow morning I’ll be waking up around 5am for my first day at Coding Dojo. The next few months will likely be fairly difficult, but I’m excited to get started.

I’ve made a good bit of progress on the pre-coursework. I have most of the challenges down to 2 minutes or less, but one or two hold me up a bit more than I would like. I spent some time solving the same challenges but with different values to try and drill the basics into my head.

I hate to cut this post short, but it’s late and I need to get some rest. Big day tomorrow.

Thanks for stopping by.

4/25/2016

The pre-coursework has kept me busy lately,  but hasn’t really been what I expected. I finished the HTML/CSS course on Code Academy and was hoping to put that to practice in the pre-coursework, but so far it’s been entirely Javascript. After being thrown into some challenges that looked like another language to me, (I suppose it is) I had to go back to the drawing board on how to tackle this.

I’ve completed all of Coding Dojo’s Algorithm app lessons, but I struggled a bit there. I’m making a point to revisit those often to try and get the recommended solution time under 2 minutes. However, the challenges that followed that have been, well, challenging. I’ve restarted the Code Academy course on Javascript to try and at least have some idea of what I’m looking at, but it has been really tough going. Things just aren’t clicking like I would have hoped and seemingly basic concepts are very difficult to wrap my mind around.

I’ve had the luxury of having a few friends going through some of these challenges with me. We all kind of look at the same material and come together on solutions and what we think is correct. This has been helpful for sure.

One recurring issue I’m having is just remembering the syntax. Placing “{}” properly without some example code devolves into a guessing game more frequently than I’m proud of.

I’m doing my best to trust the system in place and just continue ramming my head into the wall that is Javascript until something clicks. Hopefully that happens sooner rather than later. Time is running low.

Thanks for reading.

4/18/2016

I’ve nearly finished the HTML/CSS section of Code Academy. It has been interesting to see how different resources teach HTML in different ways. Between the book I’ve been reading on the subject and the course, I feel like it’s starting to make sense. I won’t know for sure until I start working on my own project, but I’m optimistic.

One thing I’ve been frustrated with on Code Academy is that I don’t have a great way to have things explained to me. I’m perfectly fine with knowing that there are certain rules to coding, but I like to know why those certain rules are in place. This is hopefully where the instructors will prove valuable once I start.

The campus visit went well. I felt like it was a good idea to see the place in person. The instructors all seemed very friendly and helpful. They made it clear that they do their best to see that the students get whatever resources they need to become successful developers. I look forward to getting started in 4 short weeks.

I should have access to my pre-coursework any day now. My deposit has been paid and my seat is reserved! I was told to expect that to take me around 20 hours to complete, so I’m anxious to get started. Things should be picking up soon and I hope to be more frequent with posting here once they do.

Until next time!

4/12/2016

I’m still waiting for the last few steps of the application process to finish up, so I’m still without the pre-coursework from Coding Dojo. I have however made some progress with Code Academy. A few small things have held me up as I’ve worked my way through, but I feel like I’m making decent progress.

I also picked up Code Complete and Learning Web Development off of Amazon. Both books are fairly massive, so I’ve started with the web development one. That way I can read up on best practices there while I work my way though Academy.

Tomorrow I’m scheduled to visit the campus after work. I’m excited to see where it is that I’ll be spending such an enormous amount of time at coming up. I may try and snap a few photos while I’m there and drop them on here.

That’s pretty much all that’s been going on so far. Thanks for stopping by.