confusion === aboutToLearnSomething;

Austin Chappell
Jul 27, 2017 · 2 min read

This week has been amazing. I’ve had a lot of opportunity for growth in a variety of ways. The past two days have been really long, with a coding challenge for a job interview Monday night, and a networking Meetup Tuesday night. That, in conjunction with Violet (my three-year-old daughter) spending the night away Sunday night, I hadn’t seen her awake in over 72 hours. I was definitely ready for some family time tonight (lots of playing)!

I know I wrote an extended post yesterday about the coding challenge I did on Monday, so I won’t unpack all of that again. That said, I have had some realizations since yesterday about that coding challenge. This is one of the hardest things I’ve done to date as a programmer. I’ve heard it said, “If you’re ever confused, it just means you are about to learn something.” In talking through the coding challenge afterwards with a couple of classmates, I realized how much I learned from the process. Here are my key takeaways:

  • Be sure to always allow yourself plenty of time when you first open a code challenge (don’t do it during your lunch break)
  • The ‘typeof’ operator returns arrays as objects
  • Use Array.isArray(yourArray) to check if something is an array
  • Array.sort() modifies the existing array, so it doesn’t have to be saved into a new variable
  • Object.keys(yourObject) (and Object.values(yourObject)) is a thing, so use it instead writing an elaborate function to do the same thing
  • Objects kind of can’t equal other objects, as they take up a space in memory (still wrapping my head around this one)
  • Sorting objects of strings is different than sorting objects of numbers

Kind of a long list, I know, but I honestly would not have known a single one of these if not for doing this coding challenge (okay maybe the last one). I’m excited to someday soon have my first job and continue to learn this much everyday.

On the job front, I ended up not getting the job with the coding challenge, but some other recent developments have happened. There is a job in Dallas I have applied for, and it turns out I know one of the web developers on the team. I had no idea! From the job description, it sounds like my dream job. It would be a lot of front-end development and design: two things I am very passionate about. Also, it seems to be a culture that fosters growth and development of their employees. I can’t think of a more ideal first job. Hopefully I’ll be able to get an interview and get the job!

Back-end at The Iron Yard is going really well. The prep I’ve done has paid off. I’m learning React on my own now, but I haven’t been able to dedicate much time to it this week, given the events of the last two or three days. I think I’ll be able to really hit it hard the rest of the week and get some React apps going. I’m still loving this journey, and I’m loving it more each day!

Austin Chappell

Written by

I am a React developer in Dallas, with a few back-end skills as well (Node, Express, Mongo or Postgres). You can check out my work at www.chappelldesigns.com.

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