A Week at Boot Camp

For a number of days now, we have been at boot camp. The boot camp has really been a lot to handle so far. Boot camp is definitely one of the toughest adventures one can undertake. Little wonder it’s ‘officially’ called a simulated sprint.

Before I got to the boot camp three days ago, I had my UI template ready and my api endpoints were working. I also did have challenges like one of my mocha tests was not working. Actually, this was a challenge I had then been battling for two weeks already. Not overcoming it dampened my morale and vibe to some extent. I had enough time but not enough knowledge. I searched all where I could lay my hands on for solutions but to no avail.

My test was not the only thing wrong with my project even before coming to boot camp. I had serious issues with the deployment of my app on Heroku. It deployed but show nothing appealing than the “Application Error” cruelly gazing at me. Pains compounded, my Travis CI build was failing. I was really looking forward to the boot camp to get all my problems lifted. I ardently hoped to reach out to colleagues for help such that one of the first things I said on Slack was an enquiry about who could help. Steve helped a lot. Thanks to him I understood some things better. Over the past few days, I have struggled through these challenges one at a time. Thanks to God for my attentive LFA.

And thanks to my LFA too.

Boot camp has been really engaging. Ever since, it started, I’ve not had a chance to revisit my usually relaxation and rest pattern. I understood more about git workflow. I learnt to use a cool naming convention for my branches. I learnt to write better descriptions in my pivotal tracker board. Amazing! Even today, I learnt a fact about pull requests. The number of pull requests in a repository should speak the number of Pivotal Tracker stories one has.

In addition, I met awesome tech enthusiasts like me: Steve, the Ruby guy, Shittu, Dr. Busry, the programming doctor and AbdulRazaq. Those guys are in my group and they’ve all contributed to my progress in the boot camp. I met other guys too: Samuel, the one who helped make my travis build work and Marcus, my friend from Cycle 34 boot camp.

My experience at boot camp might have been too excruciating if not for Taiwo, my LFA. I’m glad it isn’t.