Its Day 20 And Its Time To Reflect
It was going to happen sooner or later and I thought it would be a lot earlier than it actually happened but I missed my first day posting in my "Month Of Java" challenge. Yep, day 19 was the first day I missed posting. This happened for a few reasons, but I thought today I would take a quick retrospective of my experiences so far. The challenge for me is still not over but I am not sure if I will continue posting each day until I finish.
Moving to CodeGym
After a week of trying to make it on my own, I discovered CodeGym. I've been really happy with the move I made and it has given me a lot more confidence in what I have been learning. I original plan was to make sure that every day I increased my knowledge by learning something new. This got me so far but I think this gave me limited reinforcement in what I had learnt previously. I thought that posting on Steemit would take care of that. It kinda did but Java is a completely different beast.
I think this is why I have failed on so many other occasions previously in trying to learn how to competently program. Even when I have taken on University courses in a specific programming language, I feel like they still don't drive you to work and reinforce the information you have learnt. CodeGym cannot be accused of this. Sometimes it feels like progress may be slow, but the CodeGym programming course gives you hundreds of mini example tasks on the specific subject you are working on, which are not compulsory, but they can help in getting you to really learn the subject you are working on. This is one of the reasons why I am limiting my posts over the coming days. The amount of time I have to learn Java is being taken up with coding exercises in CodeGym.
A lot of people tell you to "Take On A Project" when you start coding and I think this is a good approach but just like I did when I first started out(Back in 2002) I had no real idea what to do or what to take on. I think now I probably know what code is capable of but I think, not having to worry about "getting something to work" is helpful as the road blocks are isolated to smaller projects and time frames. I think sometimes it is also helpful to have something tangible and visual to work on and sometimes, Java code being displayed on a console can be a little limiting.
Moving forward, I am excited to continue with my "Month of Code" and hope it can build into something a little more than just a learning project. Work will get busy in the coming months but will hopefully drop off again over Christmas so hopefully will have a lot more time to continue on my Java Journey. So don't think this is the end as you will keep hearing from my.