Bootcamp Challenges And How I Adapted In The Past Two Weeks

Kayode Adeola
Jul 10, 2017 · 3 min read

The survival of any species as I recollect from my days as a young high school student is based on its ability to adapt to changes in its environment and thrive. This educators in the field of biology and other related fields see as the key to evolution. My experience so far at the Andela Bootcamp for the past week has also made me evolve in order to adapt to the rigors of the challenges and tasks set for us to accomplish as bootcampers on the highway to becoming a world-class software developer.

The beginning of the challenge for me was when I received the details of the curriculum and learning skills to be covered during the course of the bootcamp. Some of the skills I needed to learn are quite new to me, also new are most of the tools to be used to complete the challenges and tasks we were asked to do. I knew there was no other way around this but to roll up my sleeves and put in a lot of work time if I am to perform and exceed expectations, in other words, I had to adapt.

The first challenge was to start work on a full stack application by first designing the user interface template for the application. I’ve had some practice creating user interfaces from personal projects I’ve worked on in the past so it was not so difficult completing this challenge. Though I was able to complete designing the template for the user interfaces, I had some challenges in making the interfaces responsive. The term responsiveness in this context is used as a concept for user interface design to describe if the layout of the user interface will look great and appealing if viewed on different screen sizes for a great user experience. Finally, I was able to solve this challenge by reading through the documentation of Bootstrap which is a framework in my project and researched how to apply it to make the layout of my pages look great across all devices.

Another challenge I faced was setting up my project folder, this requires installing some libraries to control certain functionalities in the application I will be working on. For reasons unknown, some of these installations appear not to be working or refused to install at all. I must confess this really caused me some level of distress but instead of getting frustrated, I did the most logical thing any good developer should make good practice; read the documentation of the tools being used.

Those are just instances of many challenges being faced on a daily basis and for this, I have created an approach which is to first read the documentation of any new tool I will be using to understand it to an extent, then I search online for examples of its application and possible challenges faced by other users while making use of them. I also consult some of my Bootcamp Facilitator Assistants and any of my team members or bootcamper to discuss how to solve the problem. I also planned a learning schedule to fast track my learning process so I could cover some knowledge gap if I am to survive bootcamp and thrive as a developer.

Learning and working at the bootcamp has been quite an awesome experience, asides it has also given me a new perspective on problem solving. Now I have a strong belief that there is no limit to how far one can develop and keep improving on any skill as long as commitment and passion for excellence are not lacking.

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