My Road to Web Development
After graduating from General Assembly several friends have reached out to me asking about my experience at the Software Engineering Immersive Bootcamp, and about the steps needed to become a software developer.
More specifically, they have asked me “where do I start?”. Faced with this question I started remembering when I was in that same position just a few months ago. Building websites seemed like some sort of magic back then. Coding was a black box where a design went in, and a working website came out.
At that point I was asking myself the same question, where do I begin? Should I just open a word document and start writing some code on it, and open it with chrome? What should I write in this document? VBA, C++?
Everything about websites was a mystery to me, but I had the curiosity. I wanted to know how these programs that I use every day — to connect with my friends, to check my email, my bank account, everything — work. In general, I have always been very curious about how things work, but this seemed like something everyone was familiar with except me.
Determined to get a handle on website building, I started looking for bootcamps. I would read their curriculums, their reviews, and investigate the companies that offered them. In my search, I found General Assembly. Not only did they have good reviews, but they mentioned they gave their students support to find jobs in the industry after graduation and had free workshops that promised to have you create a working website in one session. A free session.
I have to be honest. This made me question the necessity for a bootcamp for a minute. If I can build a working website for free in one workshop, why would I need to attend, and pay for a whole bootcamp?
I went to the workshop ready to come out of it turned into a web developer. They started by talking about HTML, and how this is different from CSS, and that you need both to put something decent on the screen. They mentioned how HTML is the bones of an application, and how CSS is the styling around it, and then they talked about javascript.
Oh JavaScript, nice to finally meet you. You are the one responsible for making anything that I see on the screen clickable, and full of function. At last, I discovered what I needed to learn to not only put pretty things on the screen but actually give the user the power to do something with the things they are seeing.
Unfortunately, we didn’t discuss javascript in depth in that workshop. They were right, by the end of it, I could see what I wanted to see on the screen. I just had one tiny issue. It did nothing. It was like a painting. Lacked any interactivity. That’s when I began to understand why I needed to learn what they would teach me on the bootcamp. As you can imagine, that only made my already profound interest in the bootcamp grow even more.
I enrolled in the bootcamp. I did briefly consider learning to code part-time, but I didn’t want to treat this learning experience as a hobby, or anything less than my priority. If I truly wanted to understand the material, I knew I had to be working on it at least 40 hours per week.
I also considered learning for free, following online tutorials, but what good would that be if that would not help me find a job in the field after I finished watching all the videos. I wanted something that would give me some sort of credibility in front of a recruiter just a couple of months down the road.
These were the 2 main reasons I decided I wanted to learn in a class setting and to enroll in a bootcamp. Why did I choose GA you might ask? If the instructors were going to be half as good as the instructor that hosted my free workshop, they would still be great instructors. I have to say, that free session, the size of the GA community, knowing that they would certify me, and even prepare me to be a good candidate in the eyes of recruiters won me over.
Looking back on it, I don’t regret it one bit.
My instructors were amazing. They covered every topic on the syllabus, came well prepared to class, helped us break the ice as a group, and were unbelievably knowledgeable. Even when one of them didn’t have the answer to one of our questions, or couldn’t figure out one of our bugs during class, another instructor would have the answer. They complemented each other so well, I want to believe GA does this on purpose? I am not sure, but it seems like it. Very few times they had to research, and get back to us. Usually, they would have an answer right away.
I made great connections and friends. My classmates turned out to be amazing, talented people that share my interests. It has been a great asset to have them to exchange information and support. This went on during class when we would help each other with bugs on our apps, and even after graduation as we try to achieve our common goal: to find jobs as web developers. We still talk and do stand-ups and stand-downs to remain involved and supporting each other.
It expanded my knowledge considerably. Remember I thought for a moment that I would know how to build websites after the free workshop? I couldn’t have been more wrong. It turns out building websites just gets more and more complex as you try to incorporate JavaScript, not to mention a database, a backend. In a matter of days learning JavaScript became learning Node, that became learning Express, that became learning Mongo, and that became learning React. The list goes on, and I still have many things to learn, but I am very happy I got my foundation from people that knew what they were doing, and who took the time to make sure I developed a good JavaScript mental model first and foremost.
Now I can say I know how websites work. Not all of them, but most of them. Maybe not the most complex websites, but the big majority, and even though I still feel like my handle of computer science concepts can be improved, now I feel comfortable asking the bigger questions. How does this website sell items online, for example, and learning the library or framework they used for that goal on my own with the help of documentation.
