Mustard and serving hatches (or 'How I explain what I'm learning to my parents…')
Tags: learning, bootcamp, programming, beginners
Published: 2024-06-05 11:12:06

_I recently rediscovered a load of blogs I wrote during bootcamp in 2019.  It felt good to retrospect and I'm also pretty proud of them, so I'll be reposting some of them here...._


![Cartoon strip with 2 characters trying to make a computer work](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/nadhvnznq20zghdwfhs4.png)


I'm 11 weeks into coding bootcamp and my mind is turning towards a subject for my next blog.  This weekend is a little different from the previous ones - all the code challenges have been taken and passed, next week we continue working on our paired projects and then its onto the final module, the one where all our learning comes together in projects we will conceive and build by ourselves. 
 We have all written and given our Flatiron School Presents presentations. There are no labs to be done in preparation for a week of lectures on an entirely new topic. It feels like the first real chance to breathe since this whole intense experience began, a brief moment of calm before module 5 kicks off. Unsurprisingly my mood is somewhat reflective.

We had a presentation in our first module, a key theme of which was perspective.  It is only after you've travelled a way down a road that you can pause to take a look over your shoulder to see where you've been, to look at the same place from the opposite direction and with the wisdom and benefit of hindsight.

I don't come from a computer-literate family, in the sense that lots of developers often seem to.  In junior school we had a single BBC Micro computer in the classroom that we could take turns playing Podd on, then when the Gameboy came out me and my sister would spend hours playing Tetris and Super Mario Brothers, but I wasn't involved in anything deeper than switching a console on or typing 'Podd can jump'.  I didn't have any idea what programming was or how the games were made but I did love breaking things apart and putting them back together, so I ended up becoming a car mechanic.

So when I found myself changing careers many years later, my family (and at first myself) were surprised at my choice but supportive nonetheless.  (My amazing mum was still playing with my Mod1 CLI game way after everyone else had drifted out of the room.) Catching up over dinners at the weekend they say "so what are you learning at the moment?".  I take a breath and think about how best to describe the stuff I'd just learned that week and wasn't even sure how well I understood it yet.

Explaining something to someone else is a great way to check your own grasp on a subject.  It's one of the reasons we write blogs during bootcamp and beyond.  I often need to relate what I'm learning to something tangible, which means my conversations with my family go something like this:

"I'm learning about how the internet works; what happens when you press a button on a webpage; how the front and back end interact."


![A man looks very confused](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/iuyhshrwljrqz4pq3vwk.jpg)


"The what and the what?"

"Frontend and Backend?  Well, you know when you come to ours for dinner, you all sit at the table and I'm in the kitchen still, and I usually stick my head through the hatch and ask you if you want any condiments?  Well you're at the front end, the fridge is the back end, and I'm whats called a server.  When you ask me for mustard, or click on a link to go to a new webpage, that's a request from the frontend, or the 'client'.  You requested mustard so I have a look in the fridge, which is a database where all the condiments - or web pages (more specifically all the text, pictures and instructions for how to style them) are stored.  Once I find it, I take it back to the hatch, stick my arm through and pass it to you… that's the job of the server - go get the thing the client (browser) asked for, and serve it up to them so it can be looked at on the computer screen.  Or in your case, spread onto your steak."

There's also a story about what variables are and how (and why) we pass them, explained in the context of Mum and Dad writing the Christmas cards.  I'll save that for another time.


![A cartoon character holds a skateboard and waves.  The caption reads: "Cool story bro!"](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/ffa7sylyc0cjmvml1k15.gif)


When I realise I'm losing them, I adjust my approach but smile inwardly because I also realise that I'm getting it.  The coding journey started for me when I went to my first Girls Code MK meetup just a year ago: I always thought coding was beyond me but within the hour they'd helped me display a picture of kitten, and I even knew how to change the colour of the border.  I can't wait to go back there in a few weeks armed with my newfound knowledge, and perhaps use it to help another woman or girl get started on her journey.  I might need to work on my stories though.