Day #2 — Sticking to the Grind

The first day was more of an orientation. The second day, I can now say that bootcamp has officially began. And the most funny thing is that it is remote. All bootcampers are to work from home and make submissions of their work to their group leader no more than 4:30 pm everyday, using online collaboration tools.

I can now say that the word “bootcamp” has come alive for me, as I slog away at the exercises which were given the first day. They are mainly meant to bring us up to task on how to think logically and how to approach computational problems, kind of a custom Computer Science 101–302 class, since some of the topics cover intermediate level stuff.

The tasks seem easy to the naked eye, but attempting them makes me rethink my initial perception. I check the online messaging tool, Slack, to see how everyone is fairing, and the backlog of messages in the channel just confirm my fears. Everyone is stuck trying to do one thing or another. There is help, but considering that everyone is remote, individual output still matters a lot. The need for you to be able to break down a problem into computable pieces before implementing an algorithm for it will determine whether you’ll be able to complete the exercises in time or not.

Time is ticking as I get errors every time trying to submit my solutions for the various programming logic challenges on the Andelabs platform. I sometime get nervous wondering whether I’ll be able to beat the 4:30 pm submission deadline. But I still manage to maintain my cool. During the first day we were taken through a session that challenged us to see every problem as an opportunity to grow our current skillset. After composing my self, I read carefully the test cases that the challenges are required to pass then make adjustments to my code accordingly. Doing the above step consistently enabled me to progress through the lab exercises relatively faster. I managed to complete the day’s assignment two hours before time.

By then I felt quite elated but decided to go back to the Slack channel to see how everyone in our group was progressing. Most of the bootcampers had managed to attempt most of the exercises but there was one particular challenge that seemed to pose a seemingly unsurmountable obstacle to virtually everyone in the group. They had approached it from every imaginable angle but nothing seemed to work for them. It was the same for me before I managed to take an extremely keen observation at the unit tests.

Keeping up with the Andela value of collaboration, I explained the source of where the errors they were getting and how to eliminate them on the channel. After a few minutes, the channel was flooded with all manner of messages from bootcampers, most of them thanking me giving them the trick that enabled them beat the deadline.

We called it a day. As much as I was starting to get used to the process, I anticipated more challenging stuff in the coming days.