Practice x3
2nd week of bootcamp. I now realise calling it a bootcamp is apt. Things move pretty fast and you better be up to par on things or get left behind. Well thankfully like back in the army, we have supportive platoon mates. T.A’s give the best of help. Hwee Lern was great and helpful! Unfortunate that the time spent was short but he’s off to greater things in the future. Any T.A is a buddy of mine hahaha.
We got started on HTML/CSS on the 2nd week. Aaah front end stuff, finally. I enjoy the designing aspect and find myself easily immersed with the process. I didn’t know there was a thing as Bootstrap. It makes everything so much easier! It got me thinking though, as I was doing my portfolio assignment…I was just copying and pasting and then tweaking it to my own design per se. Is this how it is in the industry? I mean, currently i’m not really really adept at say coding a component, or a jumbotron, so I can simply copy and paste it. It made me ponder at whether someone in the industry can really code or are they just copying and pasting from a library? Or simply copying a site using the inspect tools? I’m pretty pleased with how my assignment went with my current lack of skill but also not really proud I can say it’s truly truly my code from a blank page (as I used the carousell component from BootStrap and contact form template). What do you guys think? Am I justified to say that it is truly MY work? Perhaps I’ve spent too long of a time in the arts field.
Next lets jump on to the tic-tac-toe assignment which we paired up to do. My buddy Naz is waaay ahead in understanding Ruby and he is largely the brain behind the game mechanic. So he managed to figure out ways to do it pretty fast and completed 99.99% of it. Having the mindset in the previous paragraph, I felt uneasy lying to myself and saying I contributed to the assignment. Thus after the deadline I tried doing one on my own. It hit me hard. Apparently my understanding of Ruby is still weak. I need to improve badly. Went on to codewars and tried doing katas. Some were manageable, just need to Google some new methods I didn't know of. Some I was stumped just reading the question. This leads me to my action plan.
I have decided to pinpoint my weak areas.
“It isn’t going to be just front end design and dazzle stuff Sha. We’re in this course doing full-stack”….I told myself.
Things I need to improve on.
- Ruby understanding. Solving the leetcode questions are one thing. Applying the knowledge to program a functional site or game is another. I need to improve my understanding of it better. Rails is coming up in the next week and I better have Ruby on lock. Next time Hwee Liang does a Ruby support group again I’m in.
- Git. Currently I’m just following the instructions I wrote in my notes. I need to be more adept at it so I can create repos or add or make changes without referring to them. Simply put, working on the terminal using commands just off my memory and understanding without referring to notes.
All in all I’ve learnt so much from just 2 weeks. The influx of information I’m amassing through this course is amazing. I personally like Alpha Camp’s motto “GET IT DONE”. It reminds me to be resilient and push through the obstacles I get thrown at.
