Pre-Course Week 2

As I finished week 1, looking forward to the challenges that lay ahead in week 2 and looking forward to moving up to my new flat in London, I prepared myself for a harder week. Although, I do not think any amount of preparation could have got me ready for the second half of Chris Pine’s Learn to Program book.

The weeks objectives sounded easy enough, completing the second half of Chris Pine’s Learn to Program book, which is structured with exercises at the end of each chapter, cementing the concepts that are covered. I had previously completed the first 8 chapters without much problem, so did not think it would be too much of a problem, however things got hard, quite quickly. I must have spent hours just on the first set of exercises and once completing that, I felt quite lost and confused. A lot of time was spent going through the concepts using google, the Ruby documentation and Stack Overflow, which proved far more helpful than the book, in my honest opinion.

Another one of the tasks for the week was to sign up to Codewars and complete exercises to reach a minimum of around 40–50 points. The exercises are called ‘Kata’ and you start with a rank of 8 kyu, working your way up to 1 kyu (which obviously is a lot of work). The nice thing about this is it chooses Kata that are suited to your current ranking, or ability, so as y0u progress you work through harder Kata and gain more points and elevate your ranking. I found this more motivational and easier to learn from as opposed to Chris Pine’s book, as I could see my progression through each Kata I completed.

All in all, week 2 was tough. Tougher than I thought, but rewarding in that I learnt more about how to solve problems and how to ask the right questions in order to find the solutions. Things were probably made more difficult by the fact a few days were lost to me moving up, although it’s nice to be in London and I feel more than ready for week 3.