Day Three
Two days ago I started The Iron Yard in Raleigh. If you haven't heard of Iron Yard yet, you will. This is a bootcamp style certificate program in web development. We have four weeks of learning front end development, four weeks of back end dev, and four weeks of 'specialization' or language learning. It's Day Three and I've already learned more than I did in a year of free online courses and tutorials. And I. Am. Exhausted. But exhilarated!
The first day covered how to work in command line and using terminal to work in git and push commits to github. The second we covered basic html and even created a three page interactive 'site' without any css or javascript. More importantly though, there is a lot of focus on the REAL work. We are learning how to 'just do it' without understanding the bigger picture or knowing how it works or why you're doing it. Programming is very much a second language and immersion is key.
Now this code snippet may look like pretty foreign to the average non-techie but the logic is pretty standard. Setting up an html page is a lot like writing an English paper. Only, you don't need to tell the English paper how you're going to format it before you write your content. For a computer, you do. The text editor I'm using (an equivalent to a coder's MicrosoftWord) is Atom. A super useful tool about text editors is that it will color code different types of 'words' as in it 'tells' you visually which words you've imputed are commands for the computer and which ones are the text you want to talk about. So if something is the color you're not expecting; you've probably forgotten one of those little brackets that are super important for the computer.
This morning we focused on some bigger, more important, concepts - a growth mindset. Attitude and critical thinking are so much more important than knowledge. The knowledge will come as long as you are willing to let it and try over and over until your code doesn't fail. I've heard inspirational quotes and sayings about this concept my entire life but I guess it never sank in until I finally tried something I wasn't comfortable with and failed. The world kept spinning, I didn't melt into a puddle of embarrassment, no one was hurt. Failure feels wonderful because you give it your all and know that if you still want to do it then it will happen.
The first day covered how to work in command line and using terminal to work in git and push commits to github. The second we covered basic html and even created a three page interactive 'site' without any css or javascript. More importantly though, there is a lot of focus on the REAL work. We are learning how to 'just do it' without understanding the bigger picture or knowing how it works or why you're doing it. Programming is very much a second language and immersion is key.
Now this code snippet may look like pretty foreign to the average non-techie but the logic is pretty standard. Setting up an html page is a lot like writing an English paper. Only, you don't need to tell the English paper how you're going to format it before you write your content. For a computer, you do. The text editor I'm using (an equivalent to a coder's MicrosoftWord) is Atom. A super useful tool about text editors is that it will color code different types of 'words' as in it 'tells' you visually which words you've imputed are commands for the computer and which ones are the text you want to talk about. So if something is the color you're not expecting; you've probably forgotten one of those little brackets that are super important for the computer.
This morning we focused on some bigger, more important, concepts - a growth mindset. Attitude and critical thinking are so much more important than knowledge. The knowledge will come as long as you are willing to let it and try over and over until your code doesn't fail. I've heard inspirational quotes and sayings about this concept my entire life but I guess it never sank in until I finally tried something I wasn't comfortable with and failed. The world kept spinning, I didn't melt into a puddle of embarrassment, no one was hurt. Failure feels wonderful because you give it your all and know that if you still want to do it then it will happen.
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