Personal Thoughts: Java Used To Intimidate Me But Not Anymore
Tags: java, programming, codenewbie
Published: 2022-10-20 01:33:55

These last few months have been a roller coaster of emotions and mind explosions, but I am taking the time to reflect on what I have learned and experienced going through the Flatiron School Experience.

One of the items I reflected on was my feelings about learning programming languages. As someone who took a temporary leave to pursue the software engineering bootcamp instead of a degree (I have no regrets doing that), I learned a lot more through the program than I did when I was taking the required university programming courses. 

Before completing the program, I was terrified of continuing my degree because I felt like I was going to get the degree and be completely lost. Honestly, I still feel a little lost but that is because of imposter syndrome setting in. However, I feel more confident now than I did before. I feel like I am going to continue and continue strong.

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## Where does Java fall into this?

I mentioned Java in the title, but not in the introduction. Though, I did mention it a little. It was the programming language that I was required to learn at University. I had to take two courses called programming 1 and programming 2. One focused on OOP and the other on data structures. I was so terrified of Java, and the assignments that were given did not seem clear on what they wanted me to do (clarification did not help either). 

I thought this was how the real world was going to be like. I could never remember anything and learned nothing (or so I thought). I wish I could have told past me it was going to be okay. It turns out, I am just a bad test taker.

Not only am I a bad test taker, but reading 40+ pages a week on a programming language, and doing an assignment with code that has little to no comments is not the best approach for me. Speaking of comments, I was told comments were important to get other people to understand what you are doing with the code. I have experience getting confused on code because I have no comments to explain what is happening and I have to go through the code to see what I am working with.

Because of this experience, I was afraid of learning any other language. However, Flatiron changed my views on that. I said it before and I will say it again! I feel like I can learn anything after going through the program. It helped me discover what the best learning method is for me, and now I can utilize it in my own learning.

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## I'm Coming Back To You, Java!

I went back to the fundamentals of Java, as that is how I am used to starting my learning process. I realized that I did learn a lot, but somehow traumatized myself into thinking I knew nothing and suppressed that knowledge into an unknown place in my brain. Majority of it was review and me wondering why I thought even basic Java was difficult.

I began my OOP journey with inheritance, encapsulation, polymorphism, and abstraction. I have no idea why I thought that was hard either. It is still something that I need more practice in, but it is not completely confusing to look at it anymore. In fact, I am more than happy to see that it makes organizing code easier and maximizes the functionality of my code.

I am now beginning the data structure topics in my re-learning Java journey. Now that I am here, I feel like it is important for me to document my learning to reference and update it in case I forget or want to make the code that I will be creating for myself better.

The future blogs will be a combination of personal thoughts and specific topics I learn throughout my data structure journey. They will be based on my own understanding of the topic, so if there is a better way to tackle the topics I discuss, I will always be all ears!

Until next time!