Y I code
By: Leslie Yi
Tags: Classical Music, Codingbootcamp, Musicians, Flatiron School, Coding

Whatever path I take, I seem to be choosing a path that requires long hours of sitting by the keyboard, whether it is in this form,

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or the other!

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My Flatiron School journey began about two weeks ago, but my official coding journey began in 2021, around May. As I was finishing up my offline, covid-friendly requirements for my master’s at Manhattan School of Music (MSM), I was desperately searching, comparing coding bootcamps here and there. Let me rewind to give you some background of Y I left the classical music field.

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In January of 2020, I had just started my second semester at MSM. As a full-time student, I had several part-time jobs; piano instructor, photographer, pianist, worker at Carnegie Hall…

My grad student life in New York City was bustling within the music and arts field. In the following months, my spring break had begun with the excitement for me to catch a break. One of my favorite cellists was coming to Carnegie Hall to perform so I booked tickets to go watch with my roommate.

Then came Covid-19 in March that wiped out the entire music industry among others like Thanos’ Snap. Eventually I got laid off from my jobs and I was no longer able to gig around. Needless to say, my school never returned on-campus since spring break, instead we went online.

As a musician, it was heartbreaking to see music as one of the first things to disappear, yet the last thing to re-appear. I felt betrayed by my major as if music wanted me to leave the field. I questioned my short-term and long-term musical goals. To be told that music was not essential disabled any visions I had. Something I strived for so long, studied and loved for decades was taken away by the virus. Summer of 2020 could not have been any worse with these depressed thoughts in my head. I knew I needed plan B in order to avoid being without a job for an uncertain amount of time. No matter what, music will always be there in me. I will always identify myself as a pianist and a musician before anything else.

So I picked myself back up, and that was when I first learned about coding bootcamps by a friend of mine. After doing some research, I quickly realized that a bootcamp was impossible at the moment, since I still had one year of grad school left. I had to bookmark that chapter for another time.

Few seasons later, it was Spring 2021. In NY, I was on and off campus, finishing up and graduating with my master’s degree as I was dipping my feet into coding. I had my top-three choices of the bootcamps, my top, of course, being Flatiron. To be honest, at first I was miserable, reading over labs that brought me back to calculus class in high-school. I studied a couple of hours of Javascript every(other)day. Once I passed the code conversation for Flatiron, I started phase-0 pre-work by June to prepare myself for the June 28th 2021 cohort.

A view of UWS from Manhattan School of Music

Fast forward to July, there I was in my little dungeon, two weeks into coding at Flatiron School, facing my biggest challenge, known as the Code Challenge. Code Challenge is a test to evaluate the student’s understanding of the subject towards the end of each phase to determine the qualifications to move forward to the next phase. Yup, It sounds scary, and let me tell you! I was prepared for my worst case scenario which was failing and repeating phase-1. Did I pass or fail? Let me save you the drama and tell you that I ended up passing!

Prior to Phase-0, I had almost no experience in coding. I knew absolutely nothing about Javascript, only a little HTML and maybe some CSS. So, let me tell you Y I decided and continued to code.

Technology is becoming more essential and valuable than ever. I come from a field where physical presence and live performance play a significant role. Without the ‘live’ aspect, the quality of the performances and lessons are degraded easily. During the first year of Covid-19, we were forced to come together through technology. Music went off the grid, but it came back online. For a major that rarely relies on technology, there was a huge learning curve to adapt into the online life. Although we often don’t see it, technology coexisted within the music and education field. Without any of the virtual platform, I would not have been able to resume teaching during the pandemic. Technology is what kept me in one piece and made my last year of grad school possible. Coding is forgiving with time and space. Unlike learning how to play an instrument, coding does not necessarily require rigorous training at a young age, nor does it require a lot of equipment and space. Coding is approachable and friendly to someone without any coding experience. It is relatively accessible to start at a later age with the endless amount of free resources. There are institutions that give people a chance to learn, like Flatiron School where they do not specifically require a specific language to take the code puzzle for admission. Music and Coding share similar behaviors. Self-discipline is quite self explanatory. Practice Practice Practice, which is the joke, yet the motto of Carnegie Hall, is a crucial part of both fields. Practicing a musical instrument requires an incredible amount of patience that translates to coding as well. Efficient practicing and quality work does not betray you!

The Joke from Carnegie Hall

These similarities between music and coding have brought me to the mindset of Y I should continue my journey of coding. Week two at Flatiron, my #1 motto was “ONE THING AT A TIME!”. Allow me to elaborate by picking my own thought process of when I perform.

As a pianist, I may look like I am controlling everything at the same time with both hands on the keyboard, and two feet shuffling around on the three pedals. Well, that is not quite the case!

My mind is constantly playing pingpong, going back and forth between the commands. I am executing one thing and then the other. Physically I am doing all simultaneously, but mentally I am breaking down the process. As soon as I play my first note, I react and respond to the sound quality and volume that I made, and I immediately make adjustments based on the size of the hall and the piano. Within the sound that I just made, I switch my gears to listen for my right hand as I quickly switch back to my left. If I appear to be doing all this at once, just imagine me playing a very intense, high-speed pingpong game. Coding felt awfully similar to my thought process of performing.

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Here are some of my technical and mental breakdown processes that I used to keep myself together during phase-1.

Every line of code matters. In order to move on, I must understand each line in order to execute the next and so on, so forth. I should not move or write another line of code until I truly understand what each line of code means. If not, my ignorance will bite me in the back later. The labs and puzzles tend to build up. Without the first successful deliverable, I would be in trouble to perform the later ones. README files are the most important thing in a lab/code challenge. All the answers are there. As long as I follow the directions one by one, I will be fine. (Easier said than done though!) Console.log everything! I know it sounds tedious, but this was and still is an essential process to check the work and prevent errors, especially with how unfriendly javascript is to error messages. I do it all the time working on projects. It is okay to ask, especially when you are stuck. Although this was not intuitive to me at first, now I try to put myself out there in vulnerable and humbling situations. When I have a brain freeze, I reach out to my instructors and even my cohort mates, and they are able to guide me back on track. There is no shame in not knowing something, especially at this phase! Get to know your Cohort Mates. As an extroverted introvert, sometimes I struggle to make new friends. But, I quickly realized I needed a sense of community, even in my program is a full-time remote course. The more people I knew, the more support, laughter and brain power I got! Festina lente — Make Haste Slowly, A Latin phrase my professor used to write on my music. Take a deep breath and do one thing at a time. In a test setting, there is usually a time-limit and a rubric to follow. Therefore, I would most likely be in a hurry. However, that resulted in a hot mess of jumbled ideas. Even in a learning setting, I do my best to understand an idea before absorbing several ideas at once.

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If you think coding bootcamp is a magical spell that will turn you into a coding wizard, then you’re approaching it the wrong way! Flatiron sure is a magical place with a lot of smart wizard-coaches and students, but I believe that Talent is Overrated. There is no such thing as a bootcamp myth. The myth is the incredibly dense, fast-paced work that we as students must put in and the rigorous structure of the program. It is called a bootcamp, not a picnic. The intense work must be done by us, as students, and the instructors are guiding us the way. As my instructors say, students are the drivers. Once again, hard work will not betray you, so trust the process!