5 Insights I Gained Within 3 Months of Being in a Software Engineering Bootcamp
I’ve been working within the tech space for quite a while now. It all started with reviewing technology products on YouTube, starting when I was 14 years old. Recently, I decided to jump into another space in the tech industry and learn full stack web development. Here are 5 humble insights I’ve gained within the first few months of my bootcamp.
Number 1: I will never take websites for granted.
I think mostly all of us are guilty of going about using the internet like it’s a magic tool that just works — not thinking much about what is taking place behind the scenes. I know I’ve definitely been guilty of it. However, after getting into just the basics of writing front end and back end code and seeing how complicated it can be to do something that seems so simple, I will never take websites for granted again.
Number 2: Don’t compare how good you are to how good others are.
I know I don’t have to speak on this much, because it really goes with almost anything in life. Comparing your journey and your progress to others doesn’t help anything and can add to stress and feelings of self doubt. Throughout the program, I made it a point to change my mindset to focusing on being better at coding than I was the day before. Some people takeoff quickly in the beginning and others have a sudden takeoff later down the road.
Number 3: Practice every day (or at least most).
In the very beginning, I noticed that if I didn’t practice with concepts that were fresh in my mind, I would tend to forget them quickly — thus creating unnecessary frustration. Taking breaks are of course important, but practicing as much as you can is also key. When I started to rework similar problems and repeatedly build upon concepts I learned, I began to observe how much everything started to click.
Number 4: Don’t leave things until the last minute
Admittedly, I’ve been known to be a procrastinator — it’s just in my nature. In college, I was a communication major and always had to write a lot of papers. When it came to writing an essay, I could easily wait until 1 to 2 days before it was due and knock it out with the help of some coffee and energy drinks. With coding, that just isn’t possible. At least the majority of the time it’s not. Bugs are the major reason for this. Bugs in your code can be either really quick and obvious to fix or can take hours….even possibly days. When the first project came around, I thankfully did not procrastinate, however I ran into a bug that took over 4 hours to fix on its own. Please do yourself a favor and leave procrastination behind when it comes to coding!
Number 5: It’s ok to feel like you don’t know a lot of things.
The amount of things to learn in the world of software development is overwhelming. Extremely overwhelming. Between the multiple different languages, the different syntax and rules of those languages and learning what they can do — it’s a lot. It’s easy to get discouraged about this and feel like you’ll never learn everything. The truth of the matter is you will learn a lot and get good at it but you will never learn everything there is to know. I saw this reinforced multiple times from senior developers and even memes created by developers joking about how many times they have to use Google to find answers.
Hope you enjoyed reading and that it helped in some type of way, no matter how small.
