When I first received the prework material for Launch Academy, the first few items threw me off a bit but still made sense. They were mostly books on how to stay focused, organized, and productive. These are not books I would normally read (I’m more of a sci-fi and fantasy guy), but given that we were about to embark on an intense program it made sense that our minds should be in tip top shape.

To my surprise, I did not find these books that bad to read. You may find it a surprise that I find this a surprise, but it has to do with how ungodly boring I find most books outside my spectrum of interests. I learned to how to bring my brain back into focus when I see it wandering (which is frequent) and I also starting keeping more post it notes at work. A lot of post it notes. I even had inventory order me a whole spectrum of colors.

Following that I went through Chris Pine’s Learn to Program. I personally really enjoyed it and learned a lot. Recursion was a pain, but that seems to be the general consensus. Another consensus I came across during some of the meetups I hosted was that if you like Pine’s book, you hated Ruby Monk. Ruby Monk, in my opinion, was horribly designed and missed the mark on certain subjects. Primarily the parts where it forgot to actually teach you the material.

Following that there were a few more books on database design object-oriented design. While they are both filled with great information, the problem I had with how long they were. Both of them I felt that could have been summarized in one chapter, but since the publishers need some more material to actually sell, the authors just keep repeating themselves to fill space. Which is ironic given that one of the books is all about not repeating yourself.

Overall, I learned a lot. I learned more about responsive design with HTML and CSS. I brushed up on my Ruby basics, figured out how databases work, etc etc. Tomorrow starts Day 1 of Launch Academy. I can only hope that I’m ready. There are still some things I’m not entirely sure about (structs, procs, and lambdas, primarily) but I’m hoping that the first week or so can help to fill in those blanks.

Until next time (hopefully tomorrow).