Surviving week 1
Dear future coder/programmer:
Hello!
“long live the fighters!”
After all the pre-work I was feeling kinda overwhelmed, it felt like I had been dropped into a foreign country and asked to learn the culture, and learn the language in three hours. My brain hurt immensely from how much I had crammed in it during all the pre-work.
The First day rolled around and wow, the energy in the room was astounding, the instructors, the Mod3/Mod5 people immediately reaching out, lending a hand in our journey and suggestions on how to be successful and use your time wisely. One student told me “fingers on the keyboard” which I found to be absolutely profound! Develop good habits early and “master the art of showing up”. If you don’t put your shoes on, you can’t walk out the door. Learn how to put your shoes on first and walk out the door, thats the first step in developing a habit. You can’t walk out the door without your shoes.. well I guess you can, but your feet with get dirty and you will probably step in something nasty. Develop good habits early that won’t get let brain get dirty.
So far I’ve spent multiple hours at my desk learning, googling, and reaching out to further cement my knowledge and fully grasp what the hell I am doing. “Self paced” learning is a hill for me, I love to distract myself with guitars, books, records, etc. But this is teaching me VERY valuable life lessons as well as a TON of programming/coding. When you commit yourself to something, you must commit yourself completely.
“Comparison is the thief of joy.”
I mention this for a number of reasons.
There are a TON of people in my COHORT who already have a VERY solid grasp on programming. There are also a ton of people who are completely new to this whole thing, half of us seem to know nothing, the other half seem to have already used some very advanced coding languages in the past. I have messed around with Linux; a regular of mine at a bar I worked at once gave me an UBUNTU disc to boot up and mess around with after I expressed interest in open source software and fascination with the cypher-punk movement. I also have messed around with HTML/CSS a fair amount posting on myspace and randomly trying to build websites for fun when I was bored in high school. Don’t judge your progress based on the success’s of others. This is a HUGE mistake I made VERY early on without realizing it.
For the last thing in this post I suggest is, self care. This is extremely important. What your are about to embark on is a journey of self doubt programming rabbit holes, you will feel like Elon Musk coding away then all of the sudden: *KABLAM!*
<<SYNTAX ERROR< UNEXPECTED END!*<MAIN>:2>>>
this will inevitably make you feel like an idiot and question your whole existence. Don’t let it, this is the computers way of talking to you. It is saying, “Hey dude.. I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about because you didn’t fin..” … catch my not so subtle drift there … eh, eh?
If i don’t finish my sentence, you won’t understand what I am trying to convey, this is exactly what the computer is doing! It’s trying to help you, so practice learning how to read the way it talks back to you!
The road to computer programming is paved with tears and cheers. Try to focus on the cheers, reward yourself for progress.
Enjoy the ride!