“How far? Your code don run?” — AndeLabs Frenzy

Today, the fourth day of the Andela Boot-camp, started on a really light note. Calm and collected geeks burying their heads in their laptop screens trying to reach a 100% on their codecademy Ruby course. OKONKWO VINCENT IKEM warmed us up with an attention game telling us to name an object in the room someone else hasn’t. Though it ended abruptly, it was a very interesting activity necessarily needed to brighten up the atmosphere.

Not long after, a question and answer session started where our trainer answered all bothering questions concerning Ruby properly. Then, we were given the tasks of the day — finding efficient algorithms to 3 questions (without using in-built ruby methods of-course):

• To Create an algorithm that has a words method that takes a string and outputs a hash of how frequently the word appeared in the string
• To create an algorithm to perform a set of instructions based on the data types passed into it as arguments
• To write a function, reverse(string), that returns the reverse of the string provided

The height of the day was the (roughly) 3-hours of coding the class had to undergo. The atmosphere started out silent as every man was trying to put his/her problem-solving skills to the test. Fast-forward one and a half hours and the question on everybody’s lips was “How far? Your code don run” basically asking the next person if his/her code had run. The frustration of trying to upload codes to the congested ANDELAB server forced the solo geeks speak up. From 1-man army to team player, everyone started collaborating and sharing ideas. Most people ended up with 2 to 3 other ways to solve each problem. More than anything, I enjoyed the self-learning and collaborative atmosphere. I need more of this kind of fresh air in my coding life.

Today ended after another session of question and answers. I’m delighted that most people have completed their Ruby codecademy study. Learning a new programming language in roughly less than 48 hours — now, that’s world-class!

I’m really looking forward to tomorrow…we have been promised a surprise; an ALL-DAY EXTREME CODING EXPERIENCE. (Yeah! That’s what I am talking about!) I’m sure I’ll enjoy it, I just really hope to get the most of it…