WDI Week 10

The final week of lessons is upon us and we are thinking about our final projects. It has been an intense 9 and a bit weeks so far, and although waking up and not going to GA feels like a completely foreign concept, we only have three more weeks of that schedule.

Last week Angular was the dream. I wish I had known about it earlier, yesterday we covered 'High Voltage' which was a great tool to reduce the length of the process required to get a new static page in a site. You could just add the page in and it facilitates the routing and you don't need to build a controller. Great gem! I think I'll be using it again in the future :) We also covered 'Prawn' in the afternoon, a gem to convert pages into PDF files, handy when allowing users to download information or print pages and responsive design with media queries in the morning, although technically it was my second time doing that as it was covered on the FEWD course.

Yesterday evening we had to lend some serious thought to our final projects, the initial planning of our projects was usually a process consisting of us coming up with awesome ideas that are really complex and impressive, then being reminded of the allocated time frame and having to reign in our ambition a little. This process was noticeably more serious as this was the first time we had to completely come up with an app of our own, apart from Hackathon, and compared to that a lot more was riding on this as our final projects are the biggest thing we can bring to the table for our Meet and Greet in January. You could almost see the gears turning as everyone bounced ideas off each other.

This course has made me realise that I am a very visual person when it comes to planning and talking about databases and user journeys is so much easier when I have sketched it out.

I am looking forward to seeing what everyone comes up with, and I am also looking forward to having seen a (relatively?) original project from the conceptual stage to it being on-line.

Starting WDI - Week 1

I've decided to hi-jack my personal blog for the next three months to document my time on the Intensive Web Development (WDI) course at General Assembly (GA) - I started this after finishing the Front End Web Development (FEWD) course earlier in the summer with a real enthusiasm for coding.

At some point over the last year while working as a Temporary Medical PA, I was half way through a conversation about bleeding varicose veins with a patient, when I was struck with the realisation that I would never buy a house, or (even more upsetting) a Mustang, unless I found a new profession. While it was a great job with flexible decent hours and alright pay, I needed to wake up in the morning with enthusiasm for what I did, and a career to be building. So I got the bank to give me the money for a shiny new macbook and began this (kinda)new path into the world of Technology and the Web.

Before class even started I received an email with details of an 'installfest' and pre-course work to be done. Installfest was for us to get our computers all on the same programming software set up and same software versions. I wondered if installfest was a cover for some kind of hipster initiation but it was exactly what they said it was. I had taken the Monday off (as I had done since FEWD to work on personal projects) I remember watching the little bars fill up and thinking about my last week of work in Colchester ahead, the whole situation was terrifying and exciting at the same time. They reminded me that we had to do all the pre-work and I avoided eye contact at this point because I still hadn't finished the final section of Ruby, "What!?.. I'm working full time with a 2 hour commute of over 50 miles! I'm tired!" I was thinking... Of course there were weekends.. "still tired.." yes.. That's right, people my age need sleep. I consoled myself and resolved to finish it before we started the next Monday. 

Of course the last week just flew by and I was seen off in Colchester with copious amounts of alcohol and subsequent hangover (bye bye Friday and most of Saturday day), then as it was my last weekend of freedom I had to get over to my mates place for some "Destiny" on his PS4 (bye bye Saturday evening and most of Sunday day), and I had a date back in Colchester that I couldn't turn down on Sunday (YOLO!)..next think I knew it was Monday morning and I was packing up my macbook and joining the morning commute.

Taking this two feet first with a 'failure is not an option' attitude the first two days were pretty awesome. TFL screwed me in various ways on the first few days because I had forgotten you have to add an extra 30 minutes to a reasonable journey time into the city in the morning to not be late. 

Following class wasn't too hard, and although the homework, being based on relatively novel to me was a welcome challenge. 

On day three shit got real.

We started on Ruby on day two I think and the extent I had covered in the pre-work quickly got passed and by day 4 we were starting 'object oriented programming' (OOP). I didn't really think the first week would be an 'easing in' to the course but shit really did get real, real fast. I'm not sure any more combinations of the words shit and real would even do the way I felt justice.

Our instructor J told us that if we got OOP on the first day we could have his job, I thought he was just trying to encourage us because I suspect he was faced with a class of blank faces trying, and failing, to convey an understanding of the material like mine. Thursdays class left me feeling..  Maaayybbeee I get it. Not 100% but in essence, 5 minutes into thinking about the homework I realised that my optimism must have been due to a post lunch sugar high because looking at it then I really had no idea how to express the methods I wanted to run. Thursday night I went home feeling defeated and utterly depressed. Wondering, if this is just day 4, what would day 5, week 5, month 3 be like..? I got on the train home after having sent in an unfinished program that was broken. 

Friday we were told that we weren't expected to have understood 100% of what we had done, which was a relief. That evening we went out for some welcome R&R and I had my graduation from FEWD. All I can say is that the first week was hard and they were dead serious when calling it the 'intensive' course.