2020 has been an amazing and crazy year, of course, COVID has affected everyone both on an individual level and day-to-day operations but apart from it this year I decided to switch my career to web development. At the beginning of this, I joined a coding Bootcamp training where I took a course in Fullstack Javascript software development. We normally had classes for up to 8 hours a day with an hour lunch break in between the rest of the time it was code and learning to write more code.
When we joined the Bootcamp at Lakehub the first week we had team building that helped us to prepare psychologically for the training through it we identified our personalities and came up with our plans of what we want to achieve in the coming years as well as getting advice on what we should expect in the 3 - 6 months of training.
One of the alumni talked of networking beyond Lakehub academy joining other developer communities, the
code eat sleep repeat
habit and the facilitator started off with Allan Kay's quote
The most disastrous thing that you can ever learn is your first programming language.
The bootcamp recommended the use of:-
- Vs code
- Ubuntu 18.04 (linux)
- git & GitHub
- codewars (solving katas)
- web browser (chrome / moxilla/ chromium)
Learning at the Bootcamp was project-based we started off with vanilla javascript at this time I wasn't getting anything but what really helped me I used to follow @Js_tut's advice to beginners on Twitter I used to find it timely with the time I was starting off. With time, practice, and more code with pressure headaches, I slowly got used to javascript. There were days I would write a function and get an error only to realize I didn't cd well before running node ../index.js on the terminal.
After vanilla javascript we did a bit of Object-oriented programming (OOP), data structures, and algorithms what stood out here is most articles linked to linked-lists, Fibonacci, queues are linked to developer interviews so we were told to always practice this for it will be helpful in technical interviews and some parts of programming will apply.
After this, we covered nodejs for backend with MongoDB the serverless database (mongoose js) together with postman for testing.
After some weeks we covered reactjs, we were taught to mostly refer to reactjs documentation in we do. We covered a number of projects that used fetch API, node-sass project (to understand CSS in js), and one that used Redux for state management- Budget app. We also used Jest & enzyme for unit testing.
Within some projects, we covered JavaScript the hard parts like asynchronous JavaScript and the local storage as well as using the Jwt (JSON web token).
Why Bootcamp training?
Over time I've come to realize that despite the fact that we were taught several things within a short time I find that the instructor teaching method has been impactful to my today's code I write at times I go back to GitHub to compare it to what I'm doing.
At a Bootcamp training you'll be learning alongside other students some have written code before of the same or different programming languages, some might be having CS degree and there are those of us complete beginners. What I learned is the art of not feeling intimidated by the questions other students ask that makes you feel like you don't know anything or those who are on the same page with the facilitator when you're still trying to catch up. Personally I had to accept that we are different and tried to work on myself to see that I get to understand what is being taught with time it gets to a point all students are on the same page everything seems new or understandable to everyone.
At Bootcamp training it's an individual adventure it will depend on your effort to learn there are students who know what they want for themselves like I'm joining this Bootcamp since I want to master javascript and get employable skills or be able to make a web application that can solve this and that problem within the next number of months the skills won't master itself if you don't sacrifice to learn or endure the hard life of a coding Bootcamp spending full-day learning.
What makes coding Bootcamp stand out is the more hours of learning, the conducive learning environment, and availability of facilitators/mentors who guide you in writing code and a mentor who ensures that you avail yourself for classes, commit code daily to GitHub, solve katas on code war and reach out to him or her if you have any challenges class-related or life.
With Bootcamp training, you might get a chance to interact with students who previously went through the training or maybe actively learning you can ask for tips to cope with imposter syndrome, hack certain concepts and learn their breakthroughs or how they manage to be consistent. Also, some boot camps offer students mentorship and life skills or interview training after completion of the in-class training.
Reason for writing
Wrote this since I see most people keep asking for Bootcamp experience before they join there's or to compare it with self-taught developer paths or maybe with a college degree. It might be costly but it's your own to choose at this period of the pandemic some Bootcamp is offering free training considering everything is done virtually you might consider applying for one as offers and applications are open.
Thanks for reading this far in case you come across links to Bootcamp training with open applications you can share links on the comments section.