#fullstackacademy

[jwcodes]

Update

The past 6 months have been a whirlwind! I had hoped to take time to blog regularly about my time at Grace Hopper, but it was hard to make time during such an intensive learning period. Then I graduated in April and was job searching for about 6 weeks after that. The job search period was also very hectic and demanding. I always felt like I was in a frantic state of trying to do a wide spectrum of things (networking, interviewing, preparing for interviews, job applications, studying, whiteboarding, meetups), and I found I never had enough time to do everything I wanted. I’m happy to say, though, that I accepted a job and started working as a Full Stack Software Engineer in New York in June! While I’ve been learning a lot at my company, things are much more relaxed now than before. I’m hoping to write about my Grace Hopper and job search experiences soon. :)

[jwcodes]

Foundations

In the 4 weeks before starting Grace Hopper, I completed Grace Hopper’s remote prep course called Foundations. The course covers basic and intermediate Javascript, HTML, CSS, and jQuery. After learning key concepts, I created a basic app.

I think I over-prepared a bit for my interview, so most of the concepts were review for me. If you find that this is the case for you, I would recommend spending any free time you have before your bootcamp sharpening your vanilla Javascript skills by doing challenges on Codewars.

From my experience, I found that I didn’t have time work on my vanilla Javascript skills once I started the on-site portion of the program since I was busy learning so many other things. Take the time before your program starts to become really solid on Javascript.

[jwcodes]

The Decision

After hearing back from all the bootcamps I applied to, it was time to make a decision. I sent follow-up emails to all of the schools. I received quick responses from Coding Dojo, Hackbright, and Grace Hopper. I never heard back from Hack Reactor. I also spoke with Shanna, Grace Hopper’s dean, on Skype. It’s something they set up for all admitted students.

My decision came down to Grace Hopper and Hack Reactor. While Hack Reactor seemed like a great school, and I would have preferred going to San Francisco, it seemed like Hack Reactor was growing at a really rapid rate. Soon after I was accepted, Hack Reactor announced the rebranding of their other schools, MakerSquare and Telegraph Academy, as Hack Reactor schools. I felt that this would bring down the name brand of Hack Reactor in San Francisco. I also read reviews by people that described the school as a sink-or-swim environment and and their experience as feeling like a cog in the wheel. With all these misgivings, I couldn’t justify paying $20,000 upfront for Hack Reactor.

As for Grace Hopper, I really liked the idea of being at a women’s school. The tuition was also high, but I liked that I could defer payment until I secured a job. From my interview and from reading reviews, I got the sense that Grace Hopper would be a positive and supportive environment. I was not as excited about the idea of moving to New York, and for that reason, I was still hesitant on choosing Grace Hopper.

In the end, I went with my gut and chose Grace Hopper!

[jwcodes]

Grace Hopper/Fullstack Application and Interview

The Grace Hopper application was on the longer side. In addition to basic information, I also had to provide a resume, educational background, and standardized test scores. There were around 3 short essay questions that were pretty straightforward.

Three days later, I was invited to do an online coding challenge. Coderbyte and Codewars were a great help for preparing for the challenge. The challenge lasted an hour and consisted of 5 problems that increased in difficulty. I was able to complete 4/5 of the problems. I was close to finishing the last problem but didn’t have enough time to complete it. I ended up completing it on my own after the challenge. I also found a more elegant way to solve the problem on Stack Overflow.

Three days later, I was invited to interview! The first part of the interview was non-technical but still related to my experience learning to code. The second part was the live coding session. I felt much more relaxed during this session than I did in my Hack Reactor Interview. We did a couple of coding problems. For the second problem, my interviewer and I worked together to refactor the original solution I had written. I had to get some hints along the way but was able to finish eventually. Interviewing with Grace Hopper was the best interview experience I had out of all the bootcamps I applied to. My interviewer was very friendly and made me feel comfortable, and I felt like I learned something new from the live coding.

The next day I found out I was accepted! My acceptance also meant I was automatically accepted into Fullstack and could choose to attend either schools.

[jwcodes]

Choosing Bootcamps

I chose to apply to 4 coding bootcamps:

Coding Dojo

Hackbright

Hack Reactor

Fullstack’s Grace Hopper Program

Coding Dojo

I knew a couple of people who went to this school and ended up working as developers. The school teaches 3 tech stacks, rather than just one. The tuition is also cheaper than other schools. The application curriculum seemed to be less rigorous than other schools, but I decided to apply to have a fallback school just in case.

Hackbright

Hackbright is a bootcamp for women. I was interested in going to an all-women’s school due to the low number of women in tech. The schools seemed to have a strong network with ties to a lot of companies in the Bay Area. However, it seemed the school was aimed at students with very little background in coding, and I already had some experience.

Hack Reactor

Hack Reactor has great outcomes for hiring rate and average salary. It seems that it is one of the best coding schools, and it had a lot of great reviews online. The  school requires applicants to have some knowledge of Javascript, which I liked. I had my reservations, though, because the school seems to be growing very rapidly. Currently, two cohorts of 35 students enter at one time. Cohorts attend lectures together, and the idea of listening to a lecture with 70 students reminded me too much of college lectures.

Grace Hopper

Grace Hopper and Fullstack also had a lot of great reviews online. Grace Hopper is Fullstack’s program for women, and it has deferred tuition, meaning I would pay tuition once I got a job. I got a positive vibe from the school from my research. Like Hack Reactor, the school also requires applicants to have coding experience, but unlike Hack Reactor, the class sizes are smaller. One big downside to Fullstack is that it’s located in New York, and I was more interested in moving to San Francisco.

[tleecodes-blog]

End of Week 1

We ended Week 1 trying to implement Conway’s Game of Life. I didn’t make much progress during pair programming, so I tried starting from scratch over the weekend. Things I thought of while trying to implement the program:

1. I need to take time to think about and draw out the program more. I tend to start typing whatever comes in my mind, even when my thoughts are nowhere near complete. I struggled implementing the step function, and I only figured it out when I stepped away from the js file. I needed to  think about each step I needed to take and how I could get there.

2. Bind. Ahhh! Joe was kind enough to post his solution to Game of Life on Saturday. Looking at his code helped me understand things I was confused about.

I realized whenever I made an onclick event on a button, the context of this changed from the game of life to the actual button. I was confused as to why this is, and I think I’m still struggling to fully understand the way the program is working.

In addition, I struggled to implement autoplay and pause correctly despite it seeming like a very easy task. I figured all I had to do was something like

var autoplay = setInterval(gameOfLife.step, 100) to start autoplay and 

clearInterval(autoplay) to pause.

However, I struggled because I couldn’t actually access the autoplay variable. That was set inside the enableAutoPlay function and so I couldn’t access it in my pause function. I tried to set it outside the variables but that just caused autoplay to occur immediately when the script loaded. Bind was the solution to this dilemma also, although I’m working on fully understanding how the magic works. Off to watch some videos on bind and maybe read. Perhaps I will post about bind next time.

[tleecodes-blog]

Week 1 Day 3

The current title of this blog is pretty inaccurate. i tend to worry about everything, and coding is no different. I just happened to think of Dr. Strangelove at the time.

I started Fullstack Academy on Monday and realized quickly it would be a long road ahead. So far, we built a simple game using Node, took a test checkpoint on Foundations (our prework for the program), and learned about data structures. In both (or three, depending on how you’re counting them) workshops we’ve done, I’ve encountered roadblocks. In addition, on the Foundations checkpoint, I failed to get a few specs passing while a few people finished with over an hour to spare.

During the times I think about my weaknesses, I need to remember what Nimit told us on the first day of class. 

1)We’re competing against ourselves and no one else. I need to measure my growth instead of being concerned about others.

2) I’m not supposed to feel completely comfortable. Anxiety can push you to work harder.

By the time we go over solutions, I feel like I understand the code. However, I’ve been working on rebuilding one of the data structures we learned in class, and I am not able to quickly and efficiently complete it myself yet. Practice, practice, practice, go.

[codingcaiques-blog]

What influenced and inspired you to learn how to code?

When I was in elementary school, sometime around the third grade, our school got its first computer.  It was an Apple II.  It had a black screen with green text -- this was long before Macintosh or Windows existed.  The computer was a precious gem, carefully rolled from class to class on its wheeled cart.  We were enthralled by simple games like Lemonade; we input our lemon and sugar purchases and then reviewed the sales results.

It wasn’t until my working years that I understood how much they could really do and became interested in learning more about how to use them.  Eventually, I became the software support and training manager at a law firm that had just purchased a new SQL-based practice management system.  Although we had a GUI for configuring the system and creating and running reports, we couldn’t always customize the system or the reports the way we needed them to work.

The “aha” moment finally came when I started teaching myself SQL from Chris Fehily’s SQL: Visual QuickStart Guide.  Finally, I was in the driver’s seat and could make things happen.  Need a report to match attorneys with their court appointments and sort the results by appointment location?  No problem.

Around the same time I started to help a friend launch a new nonprofit organization.  I used the Joomla! CMS platform to create a website that she could edit herself.  I got deeper and deeper into helping her add new functionality to the site.  But I ran into the same problem that I had at the law firm: I needed to know how to code to build customized components.

I started teaching myself Ruby and JavaScript.  I loved solving problems.  It could be painful at times, but it is always amazing when you finally get something to work.

In November of 2015 I applied to Grace Hopper Academy, they’re an offshoot of Fullstack Academy.  I got in!!!!  I’m working my way through their four-week, remote Foundations program right now.  I can’t wait to start in-person classes in January.