Moving Forward

For the last 4 or 5 days, I've been steadily making progress on my aunt's website that she hired me on to re-create for her. I had a hard time getting started on it, as I usually do with solo projects. This is a phenomena that seems to happen to a lot of developers, and some people characterize it as a fear of the white screen. It's really difficult to make the first steps when creating a project, but once the wheels are rolling, it gains momentum on its own. On the first day, I implemented the navigation bar and the routing. On the second day, I knocked out some of the easier pages. On the third day, I got to work on some of the more difficult pages and created an awesome grid for the portfolio page. I set up the latest news page yesterday, which turned out way better than I thought it would. I also added modals to the portfolio so the user can expand the image and description for each architectural piece they have displayed. Today, I got to work on the individual news articles, which was a lot more involved than I thought it would be. I now have a great layout for all of the pages and have embedded a Twitter feed of my uncle's tweets in the sidebar. This gave me the idea to do this for my own portfolio. It's actually a really simple library that is literally just one small component. I could add this to a sidebar on my contact information page or somewhere else and I think it would look really cool.

I totally forgot that I had agreed to do another pair programming session with the guy from my CS Prep cohort today. He's getting ready to do a technical interview for Codesmith to get into their bootcamp. Last week, we worked on some fairly easy CodeWars problems. It was great, because we got to build up some confidence and really work on our technical communication. I've found that, sometimes, when working through a really difficult problem in pair programming, the communication completely breaks down. I think what this really means that we both aren't good enough with the technical communication yet to be able to express what it is we're trying to do. Today, the plan is to get into some of these more difficult problems. He really wants to tackle some problems that are in line with what he's going to be tested on in his interview, so we'll see what we can do. I expect there will be some frustration, but we both need to figure out how to work through that and figure these things out. I really enjoy working with this guy and think he's progressing really quickly. He failed his interview the first time he took it, but I suspect he'll ace it this time. He works really hard to try and understand this stuff, and is really anxious to keep learning. He asks a lot of questions about my journey so far, which is exactly what he should be doing to get to where he's going. It's fun to see someone else with the same passion I have.

I actually just got a message from them saying I passed the CS Prep program and can skip the initial interview process and go straight to a short phone interview to get into the bootcamp. I never planned to do this bootcamp, but I have thought about it quite a bit in the last few days. Their part-time course lasts about 6 months and is held Monday through Thursday from 8-11 PM and Saturdays from 12-6 PM. The only way I would be able to consider this bootcamp is if they offered me some sort of scholarship. I don't want to go into debt to get into a bootcamp and I can't rationalize spending the amount of money they are offering upfront. While the schedule would probably work with what I have right now, the cost would be prohibitive for me and my family. They do have a great record of their students landing mid to senior-level jobs at some of the biggest companies in the world and I think it would be worth it in the end, but I don't think is the answer for me. I've found a way to learn this stuff on my own so far, and I think I'm really close to landing a nice job and jump-starting my career, so I don't know if it's really necessary. I actually started Stephen Grider's Modern React with Redux last night to break up the work I'm doing on the website, when I get burnt out from working on it and need to switch gears. So far, the course is just going through the very basics of React, but I'm looking forward to revisiting some of the more simpler topics to understand them better before going into some of the more complex stuff that still gives me fits.

Until tomorrow!