The day has finally arrive. S**t just got real!
Going into this bootcamp I had a few concerns other than just learning the material. I am notorious for having a poor work/life balance. I either throw myself completely at my work, or I throw myself completely at leisure. I'm sure my relationship with my girlfriend will suffer, since I'll be spending more of my free time at class (which is on the other side of town) and working on projects. Today is Monday, which is known as International Chest Day in the gym, and I didn't get the chance to do my workout. So developing some consistent patterns OUTSIDE of studying is going to be crucial to getting through the next 12 weeks.
The good news is that I managed to survive the first day of coding bootcamp and I am now officially on the road to reaching this goal. And joining me on this journey are 5 other students who are just as new to everything as I am. Everyone seems very cool and very determined to exit this bootcamp ready to put their skills to use in the workforce. Some people, just like me, came from the hospitality industry. Others were already working in a tech-related field but decided to change their focus. But we are all joined in our efforts to make ourselves better.
A few observations about today:
Traffic on the way to class wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been. Most of the Las Vegas freeway traffic must be cleared out by 8:15am because I barely had any issues. I won't be taking any chances though and will still leave nice and early each day. Even traffic heading back home at 5pm wasn't too terrible. The main issue is the Las Vegas heat. Leaving in the morning is still somewhat decent but the city is still well above 105F (36C) around 5pm. It drains the life from you. And it causes some serious wear on your car too. I drive an older car and would not be surprised if it didn't survive through this summer.
Today's first lesson covered HTML and command line shortcuts. Surprisingly we also covered git and github, which we will need to complete our assignments and build our portfolios. Github has always been confusing for me: when I open someone's repository all I see are files and folders and I can't make sense of anything. But today's lesson explained everything pretty clearly and logically. I'm not 100% comfortable with Github yet but I'm getting there. I also didn't know that git was a different thing from github. But there was a time when I thought that Java and Javascript were related too, so I guess you can teach an old dog new tricks.
I'm using a Macbook for the class and I have to say I really am starting to fall in love with it. The design is slick and classy. The animations and graphics are smooth and vibrant. Everything works quickly. Even the commands and menu structure, which I was most nervous about, all seem to make sense. Too bad I just recently bought an HP laptop...I have no excuse or money for another new laptop. No matter how sexy it is.
Today's projects were to create a homepage using HTML and CSS (which did not take too much time) and to debug a page (which took an insane amount of time). As a programmer, will the rest of my life be spent combing through hundreds of lines of code to make sure all open tags have closing tags and there are no broken links? I'm trying to build apps here, people! Not spend most of the day trying to figure out why my page won't display properly. Tedious is the best word to describe this feeling. I read an article that more than 50% of tech workers are experiencing burnout and I can totally see why.
Tomorrow we will be covering more CSS. I'll be trying not to sweat through my chair and dehydrate into a raisin.
