Ola! Gathoni here 🙂 ...
It's been a couple of weeks since I last jotted anything. Since I joined the bootcamp I've lost track of time and i hope by the end of this blog you will probably understand why. For context, the bootcamp that I am enrolled in offers a SWE course which is divided into mini phases with each phase having its own content. There are a sum of 6 phases (beginning from phase 0 - phase 5) . I recently got done with phase 1 and I received an acceptance email last night to proceed to phase 2.
Grab a cuppa if you experience winter in July, a glass of wine if it's summer or even take a shot if you are reading this hinged at a local bar in the streets of your hometown.
Let's talk about what phase 0 and phase 1 was CHILE!
Phase 0.
Phase 0 is basically prep. To anyone who has never been introduced to coding and tech in general, this is where all coding environments setups are made, you get introduced to GitHub (Where you will be doing deployment of your projects and it also acts a remote 'storage' for your projects) ,you learn Html for basic website structuring, You learn CSS for designing your website and you get a shallow introduction to your first programming launguage which in this case is JavaScript.
To me this phase felt like home.The Labs(daily coding tasks) sure felt like alot but the content itself was not anything to worry about. I had done more prep work on my own and this was an invitation to jumpstart my brain to the crazy workload that would soon kick in as phase 1 approached.
I cleared phase 0 with confidence that phase 1 was nothing if phase 0 was that easy. Little did I know!
Phase 1.
Ladies and gentlemen, I want to publicly acknowledge that the bootcamp was not yet started in phase 0 and that was just pure vibes!Phase 1 the content was JavaScript.
For the non techies JavaScript is used to add responsiveness to your applications. You see that thing that happens when you click a button posting / uploading an image online and you see the image on your social media account? ... Yeah.... yes... that one!
This phase drained me. We started doing independent projects every Friday to be done and deployed by Sunday Midnight. The daily Labs significantly became more with alot of content to handle before you tackled the daily tasks. In phase 0 I seemingly enjoyed the daily 9:00Am -10:00Am stand-ups but not anymore now. I lost count of the days and I don't remember a weekend that I differentiated from a weekday because all I did was code.
My days started quite early 6:00Am - 7:00Am and ended quite late 11:00 Pm - 12:00Am. It is in this phase that I got to grasp key JavaScript concepts like Manipulating the DOM , working with event listeners and APIs. Lol ... I just remembered that for the first day my mind was on autopilot and I was misusing the new tech lingo by throwing around the word 'server' everytime my code broke. 🤣 You'd hear me several times tell my colleague's..."Damn... I had a bug last night and I just realized that I had not run the server yet. " .... this sounded so geeky and especially because it was my first! lol Don't I love first's though 😉
First forward to now where I am a self proclaimed connoisseur and I have been able to use the key concepts of this phase to build projects.
Allow me to tell you alil about my top 3 projects that I have been able to build for this phase.
My end of phase project (We do assessment independent projects at the end of every phase) was called Cocktail Haven. It's an application where you can find any type of drink ranging from alcoholic, Non alcoholic, soft drinks and cocktails. I used an API that generates more than 1000 drink types. The app allows you to select a drink of your choice, gives you the Ingredients used to make the drink and the instructions to make it. Basically like a recipe app but now for drinks. Sounds cool? yeah I know!
My second project is a GitHub username search. You enter your any name of someone who has an account on GitHub and it displays their account and their repositories.
My third project is a Currency converter App. It retrieves data from an API that has 161 worldwide currencies . It allows users to convert currencies of their choices from one base currency to another target currency.
I got an opportunity to build more on this phase which was way fun, I had a delusional moment where I thought I was not enough but my support system brought me back to who I am. I had sleepless nights. I have not slept in my mum's home since I started the bootcamp. I have missed family gatherings. I have not seen my friends (but I also gained some at the bootcamp!) , I lost touch of what social media is, I have not experienced social life too.
In sacrificing all this I have gained confidence in my craft as a Software Engineer. It's impossible to fail at the game when you make the training way hard than the actual game. I love love to code. I enjoy solving programming problems and wondering how in this world is this code not working. My laptop has become my pet. I cuddle with it, sleep beside it, wake up to it and touch it the last thing before I sleep. I am in love with the journey and I wouldn't change a thing!
As I begin phase 2 I am more optimistic, ready to kill the bugs and I hope I get to enjoy the new lingo as we are beginning to learn react. I'll tell you more about it after the phase ends.
Bye Bye for now and Happy Coding! 🤗
Check out my GitHub profile here.