MY NAME IS MY NAME
On my journey to become a software engineer I am slowly getting comfortable with the words and jargon of programmers. Some of the language and words weren’t new to me, but in this world, I am learning additional meanings within the context of programming and working with code. Some of the words for example, that I have become more familiar with, are words with such concept names as abstraction, pseudocode, explicit, recursion, implicit, dynamic, iterative, and algorithm. These words seemed foreign in context during my first few weeks of learning to program. Not only am I expanding my knowledge with familiar words and their new meanings I am also learning new words and new names to reference things used to communicate with fellow programmers. I am learning that a foundational tenet of programing regardless of the programming language, as far as I know at this point, allows for words and names to be made up whether real or unreal to represent, refer to, or get this even anonymously refer to, objects, values of data, properties, and instructions, can you believe that! These made-up words and names work in conjunction with programming fundamentals I have been learning about. A few of these fundamentals are variables, methods, functions, and anonymous functions.
Memory allocation I vaguely understand as being a way that a computer sets aside memory and is prompted to do so when a variable is created. A variable is made simply in many programming languages when a name is assigned a value. The name usage may have some rules constraints per programming language, but having this made-up name = “something else” is how a simple variable is created.
The variable testName is referencing the value “Real Name”. And “Real Name” is allocated a space in the physical memory of the computer to be accessed when called on. Assigning a value to a variable name is also known as or called declaring a variable, having a name = equal a value. In my example, the value “Real Name” isn’t much. But imagine a variable name of everythingInMyFavoriteBook assigned the value of all the text from your favorite book. This variable declaration would allocate more physical memory allowing you to reference the data of your favorite book by just using the variable name you created, everythingInMyFavoriteBook.
As I progress through my coding Boot Camp experience I know that only a shallow understanding is occurring at this time. But the longer you do anything allows for a deeper understanding. Working through the curriculum of the Boot Camp is so surface it’s like someone’s name. Building projects is where the deeper value is. Working through your desires and own understanding may be the path to more profound insights. My current project consisted of the model-view-controller design pattern utilizing ruby on rails to generate and house the backend of my project. My backend handled the models and controllers. For the frontend, the views were handled by JavaScript housed within HTML & CSS. I currently can’t explain in technical detail what this project made more apparent. But a vague explanation is that I see how data and values flow through objects instantiated through classes. Though the project could have been written in more vanilla JavaScript, there was a requirement that we work more within the object-oriented paradigm, creating classes. This requirement allowed me to experience objects in a smaller way. This smaller insight has made it easier to slightly begin to grasp the incredible window and document objects. Though at this point I only feel I know their names.
Reaching the potential of who you are to become may require a rinse and repeat discipline. I knew this coding journey wouldn’t be easy. Some days I don’t feel I am making headway in my journey, but I just keep moving toward my goal. I just rinse and repeat my days just trying to be sure I’m pointed in the right direction. I am JaSON Rete and my internal programming value of who I am will continue to increase if I stay focused and dedicated to programming and coding daily. Even writing this blog in conjunction with each project build is something I naturally wouldn’t want to do, totally out of my comfort zone. Part of me knows it’s beneficial, and the cynical part is thinking it’s exploitative. I’m just not trying to get fined!
