Engineering Immersion Reflections

What has happened so far at General Assembly Bootcamp

It was an interesting start. A firehose of information was turned on and line after line of HTML,  JavaScript, and CSS code was filling my every waking thought and even appearing in the console log of my dreams. We were making pages and projects and little games and apps left and right. We were learning the different programs and some ways to stack them to get a fully functioning something. From a simple HTML CSS JS site for a game or a portfolio/blog site. To things a little meatier such as our group project MERN app. A React front-end hosted on GitHub and a MongoDB hosted  Mongoose and Express back-end where the users can create read edit and delete dessert recipes (Mongo, Express, React, Node). My cheerups project which was a (MEHN stack) using Handlebars instead of React for the page viewing. We learned how to set up tests for some parts of these using different libraries like Jest, Enzyme, Mocha and Chai. But that was just the beginning. Recently we explored open source contributions and took a turn from those languages into Python3 with Django and PostgresQL.

We got a day to just contribute to any projects for Hacktoberfest (https://hacktoberfest.digitalocean.com/faq) which I thought yeah, what can I add with my junior level of knowledge to the internet? Surprisingly enough though there were several places to add simple but meaningful content. Projects wanting quotes for inspiration , which I turned to Carl Sagan for. Sites wanting emoji depictions of movie titles … 🗞🌹🛷📰 (newspaper , rose, sled, another newspaper) can anyone guess this classic movie? There was even a project where you could just add your name to a list or pick a single color for a single pixel square on a project, or add some of your favorite movie quotes for which I turned to old favorites of mine, classic Mel Brooks. It was amazing to feel that I could contribute such a variety and say that “ I committed multiple additions to a multitude of open source projects.” The movie above is Citizen Kane, for those who didn’t get it, he was in the newspaper biz and his great love was a sled named Rosebud.

Then there was Python3. A new language for us. Hold the phone, Python first came out in the early 90’s. I think it’s older than some of my classmates. What an amazing feeling to learn another “new” language to code in. Doing the Python koans has led me to believe that I have found my people. Little jokes here and there about Monty Python, Spam and eggs, dogs and ducks with secret names, Spider-Pigs and so much more have me wondering why I waited so long to get into coding in the first place. The koans for those unfamiliar, are basically an instruction manual full of blanks that you have to fill in. As you enter True, False, String, AttributeError, or  “””something crazy””” into the blanks (yes triple quotes “””has””” a purpose in Python) it tells you whether it’s correct or not and moves you to the next one if you answer right. If your answer was wrong it tells you to meditate on the following line(s) of code. Upon completion you have working examples of what the language/program can and won’t do that you helped create by filing in those blanks. A very good method for learning and reaching enlightenment if you ask me. 

I sure hope that we go over some of how to set up Python testing. Particularly now that I have found out about Pygame (https://www.pygame.org/wiki/GettingStarted).  In which I have started to dabble around and was able to follow along on Youtube to make a copy of the old cell phone game ,” Snake “.  Definitely planning to explore this heavily as we have a Python project and our final project forthcoming.

Creating a simple text and turn based RPG game or even something like a basic “Pong” copy would be so enjoyable.  It has been a pleasure learning so much so quickly, and knowing that there’s even more possibilities in front of me is more than I could have imagined before entering this software engineering immersion bootcamp. Who knows what there is to be discovered after the next turn? I can’t wait to sink my teeth into it. Hope it comes with a side of Spam jokes not just spam emails.