My summer ‘17 Programming School experience
by Emmanuel Awotunde
“We are staying back in school for 6 weeks of Programming School after vacation”
Me: Programming School? Cool ! 😎
The first time I heard about Programming School was during the semester. I was really excited that the school saw the need for a program like this. Fast forward to end of the semester, everyone had gone home (I stayed back in school for a startup boot camp also organized by the school). We were expected to return to school two weeks after to commence the programming school.
May 22nd resumption day, we(or at least those that wanted to be in school) were all filled with excitement. We had our welcome meeting the day after at about 10:00 am. The meeting was more like an introduction, the instructors were present and the outline of the programming school was read out to us. At this point, they had already started getting us ready with all the rules and regulations that apply during this time. The goal of the program learning to code still remained. We had already picked the language of our choice before coming to school
JAVA or PYTHON
Of Course I chose Python.
Many others picked Java (I was shocked tho, they probably did not watch Google I/O 2017 🙄). On Tuesday of the week we began the classes.
Classes
We had two sessions everyday, which first seemed like a lot of work but we later got accustomed to it.
In Python classes, we were taught:
- basics of Python like variables, control statements, functions etc.
- complex areas like Manipulating Files, Database with Python, Python GUI with tkinter and OOP.
- Django (one of Python’s web frameworks)(This was when everything became interesting). We did a bit of Front End web development using HTML and CSS. then started Django. Mehn, At this point it was obvious that teaching programming is not as easy as it seems. The instructors were having a hard time demystifying Django to us especially going through the process of installing Django and getting it to run on everyone’s PC but at the end of the day we did (or at least most of us did).
For java:
The Java group also went through the basics and started moving up. They covered Manipulation of Files, Using Database, GUI and OOP too.
They started their web development using Java Server Pages earlier than the Python group. They also went through the same process of Front End web development and they demystified JSP.
The Project
Close to the end of programming school, we were briefed about the project we were all going to take on. I was really excited about this like other guys too. Mr. Ezenwoke Azubuike completely blew our minds when he read out the instructions for the project. We were grouped into 14 teams.
It was really scary at first but obviously, we had no choice.
We were to build a smart search engine that matches user criteria with devices in a company’s inventory both for Desktop application and Web application. The search engine uses the Heterogeneous Euclidean-Overlap Metric to match the user criteria.
We started with the project and the normal thing that happened in a group project, the lazy ones disappeared Like:
My group worked very hard on this project. Although we had huge a setback in developing the Desktop application due to Python’s GUI library which wasn’t easy to use. Nevertheless we went as far as we could with both platforms and it paid out at the end of the day.
Presentations
All groups ( both Python and Java) had worked really hard on the project. All groups were required to have team heads and presenters. All the groups had their different presentation. Every group wowed the judges. There were two rounds of presentation.
Awards
The presentation occurred on Thursday of the last week. Friday was the prize giving day. There were four winners. 1st place, 2nd place and joint 3rd place (My group was 3rd).
I gained a lot from attending Programming School. Aside from WiFi and power supply, I learnt a lot.
Thank you for reading.
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