Galen's Adventures in Programming

As I sit here in a hotel room, spending some quality time on Code Signal  (previously CodeFights), I am reminded of a different hotel stay when I first began my official journey to becoming a developer.  I had taken computer science and JavaScript classes years prior, but that was the year I had committed to taking a programming bootcamp and making my dream job into my career. Let me take you back to a sweaty, tropical night in Florida.  It was clearly October because the rain lasted all day, instead of a single hour or two in the afternoon (plus it was my birthday, so the month was pretty clear to me.)  I had spent all day running around the Magic Kingdom at Disney World with my husband, and now we were back in the room and he was fast asleep.  I took out my new-to-me MacBook Pro, and did my very first lesson for my programming bootcamp in a new language: Ruby. I will never forget that trip, for so many reasons.  There was the ice cream sundae riverboa...

It's amazing how important it is to practice for technical interviews.  When I first heard it suggested I thought that it was so you could have experience with the problem your interviewer gave you, but the more I interview the more I think it's about re-wiring your brain to work with logic problems.  It's sort of like crosswords - if you jump right into a hard crossword, you might get one or two unconnected answers and walk away thinking crosswords are impossible. If you start with something simple, though, you can get in the rhythm.  You might recognize a clue or two, or subtle hints in how the clues are worded that will lead you down one thought process as opposed to another.  You might not finish the crossword, but you will at least get one chunk of it finished, and feel like maybe you can do this (with more practice.) The more you practice, the bigger that chunk will get, until you have a crossword with maybe one or two blanks.  Then if you tackle that ha...

Today was a big milestone for me - I completed my first coding assessment as part of an interview process.  It was 25 minutes of just me and the computer, sharing my screen and trying to type comments of my thought process so the person watching my assessment later isn't just watching a static screen as I thought about the best way to go about it.  My solution wasn't very elegant, but I think it did solve the problem. The best part about the whole coding assessment--even though I was nervous about 25 minutes deciding whether or not a company would want to continue the interview process--was that it was still fun!  Regardless of whether my solution was correct or not, or whether my thought process was sufficient to allow me to continue on in the interview process, I really enjoy writing code.  That's what it all comes down to, and I am so lucky that I have the opportunity to make money doing something that I enjoy this much.

My six-month engineering internship at One Door is winding to a close, and I am amazed at how much more comfortable I have become with the everyday process of being a developer in a workplace.  Git has been described as something that is "hard to learn but once you know it, hard to live without."  The ability to be working on a feature on one branch, then be able to (on the same machine) easily look at a different version of the code to help debug something is incredible.  The fact that developers can treat this as unremarkable is even more incredible. I wish that I had kept up with this blog a little better while working, but I have been absorbed by what I am learning every day and what new tasks I have been given.  Working as part of a team has been amazing, and the best feeling is when you are taken off of one team and put on another specifically because they asked to work with you.  That's not to say I haven't made my share of "new developer mistakes,"...

I haven't been posting here as much as I planned when Launch Academy was winding to a close, but for (what I think is a) good reason.  After graduation we had a Career Kickoff event, which introduced us to employers in the area who were looking to hire Launch Academy grads for entry-level positions, and that began a few weeks of almost non-stop interviews.  No amount of preparation can really make you ready for your first on-site interview with a technical company.  In my previous experience, an interview was almost an hour long conversation where they tell me about the position and ask if I would be okay with that, I say "Yes" and ask about the dress code, and they offer me the job. Having a group of people actively trying to see if they want to work with you, and if they think you can be taught their "monolithic" database and program, is a whole different ballgame.  In a way, it's more nerve-wracking, because you need to impress every one of the people y...

Yesterday was our Career Kick off and Graduation at Launch Academy.  Over the past 10 weeks on campus I have learned an amazing amount about programming, whether it's TDD, pair-programming, starting a project, or learning a new language.  I created a Capstone Project, called the Family Newsletter, where I demonstrated these skills in application with a 2 week deadline.   After graduation, it's easy to ask... now what?  For me, the answer is simple, yet 2-pronged: 1. Apply for Jobs! This might be pretty obvious, but as much as I love programming I would love even more to be able to do it full-time as part of a team of great individuals. 2. Keep Learning! The best part of being a Developer is continuously learning new things.  I noticed that a lot of companies I was researching were asking for a knowledge of Java, or had some Java in their full-stack list of technologies.  I'm going to try going through a couple of introductory courses in Java ...

There are only 4 days of Launch Academy left, and it is staggering to think of how much I have learned in the few weeks of class.  I know that I won't stop learning after graduation, and I certainly won't stop coding!  I will be writing some code every day, and trying to get back into the habit of coming here to talk about it. The coolest thing I've discovered this past week and a half while working on my capstone project is QRcode.react , which is a pretty easy way to generate custom QR codes in React apps. I've always felt that QR codes hold a magical appeal, so figuring it out was really exciting.  Using my phone to read a code generated on my computer wasn't the most practical experience, but it's so cool! I think that's one of the things I love most about programming.  I hope I never take for granted that ability to finally "see behind the curtain."  In the coming weeks I will be applying to Developer jobs galore, and I know that the amaz...