My Time at Flatiron School
Tags: ruby, rails, react, javascript
Published: 2022-07-15 17:54:09

It has been both a long and a very short 15 weeks coming. As of today I have officially graduated the 15 week Software Engineering bootcamp, and although I don't know everything nor do I think I can walk into a job and know what I am doing immediately, I am miles ahead of where I was a short time ago. 

When I first started this program I had never seen any code. Coding was completely foreign to me and it all started because I enjoyed video games and building desktop gaming pcs and thought that my intrigue with computers would hold up well in working with under the hood programming and learning how computers and applications work. That may have been the smartest decision I have made to date. I learned Javascript, React, Ruby and Rails languages in these past 15 weeks and I now have the knowledge to build a full stack application with a custom backend API and fully customized React front end. That's an impressive jump in 15 short weeks.

Starting with Javascript and React in the first 6 weeks, I think was the initial spark for me. Learning about functions and callback functions and working with the DOM to manipulate and create a smooth and seamless user experience was a true joy for me. I love being able to create simple buttons and then have an endless possibility of what you can do with them. I also personally really enjoyed working with React as it seemed so much easier to handle than basic Javascript alone and being able to create functions or components and automatically see them appear on the screen is rewarding too. I learned very quickly in the coding world you have to take the small wins when they come, or the failures will drown you.

One of my favorite things with front ends is the immense amount of support and external styling libraries they contain. Using libraries such as Material UI, Semantic UI, Bootstrap, etc. to style my pages without all the grunt work of coding hundred of lines of CSS is breathtakingly simple and makes it so easy to create the front end you have imagined in your head. 

After the 6 weeks of front end work we made an abrupt shift to Ruby and Ruby on Rails. This change was slightly jarring after spending so long just focusing on one main coding language, but was necessary in both preparing me and my cohort mates for the real world, as well as getting in all of the information to become full stack developer in our short timespan. Ruby was not inherently difficult for me. I think the hardest part was taking myself out of the Javascript frame of mind and to stop thinking about things like mouse/click functions, component rendering and things of that nature. There had to me a reset to start thinking in a "database population" frame of mind to start thinking about models and controllers and serializers and model relationships to get the desired data to populate your front end the way you wanted to be able to access it. 

Being able to populate your database the way that you want it to with seed data and serializers was the best part. You can manipulate your data the way you want it to populate before it even makes it to your front end, to make your life much easier while manipulating that data on your user side. 

After all of these 12 weeks put together, we were set free for the final three weeks of the program to build our capstone projects for graduation. No partners, no guidelines just you, your computer, and your imagination with a small set of things to make sure you accomplish like populating your seeds with complex data, having at least two has_many_through relationship in your backend, using React Routing, and a few others. We were sent off with our new-found knowledge to create a full stack application that could showcase all of our abilities, and boy did we showcase our abilities.

Through my time at Flatiron school I have learned so much, met some amazing people, and was gifted one of the best instructors I could have possibly asked for. Is it stressful? Yes. Is it expensive? Less than a four year degree, but still yes. Despite all of the strife, anxiety, and financial burden of a bootcamp, it was absolutely worth it and I would recommend Flatiron to absolutely anyone interested in pursuing a career in coding. Pick it up, get started, and see if it's for you. If it is for you, then Flatiron will definitely help you hone the necessary skills for the industry and you'll have the opportunity to pursue a life long career and hopefully meet some amazing people on the way, as I was so lucky to do. Good luck on your journey and, as always, happy coding!!