Coding for a Career
Tags: career, beginners, writing
Published: 2020-10-12 15:15:16

## The Road So Far (Weeks 1 - 4)

All I can say is "Wow". The last 4 weeks have flown by (I still can't believe it has been a month already). Running my energy levels to reserves almost everyday has been exhilarating, in a way (I'm crazy, I know). My pairs have been amazing and I can't thank them enough for dealing with my quirks as we work together to solve various forms of FizzBuzz and calculators.

Now, as my instructor said this morning as we began module 2: "Congratulations on finishing module 1, you're all Java developers now". We wrapped up with a capstone that utilized all of the knowledge we gathered over the last month (more on that below).


# Linking Up

This last week's career assignment was to work on our LinkedIn profile. Now, I've had a LinkedIn probably since 2014, maybe a bit before, but I've never put much effort into it. Just the bare minimum. 

We were told to refactor our information, make some new connections and join some new groups. As I worked on this, I realized how out of date some of my information was. My summary did not include anything since 2016, I hadn't filled out anything regarding my cosplay business, and my cover photo was the default. 

I was also in several groups that didn't matter to me anymore. So I left/unfollowed them and found some more relevant to my current interests and passions ( I was even able to find some martial arts and cosplay groups! )

I write all of this to say: Check your LinkedIn! People do really use it for recruiting and hiring. It's worth it to stay updated with it, even if it is just a little bit a day. 


# Cap it off!

Speaking of running my energy levels low. This capstone was something else. We had to design a Catering System that handled all different kinds of processes, audits, and transactions. We worked in pairs for this specific project. 

I couldn't have asked for a better pair partner. She was understanding, collaborative, and easy going the entire time. She kept me on my toes with remember how specific (or not) we needed variable names. The use of variables in certain areas to keep the code readable and the use of whitespace for the same. 

We wrapped up pretty quickly, but she was more than committed to constantly looking at the code and testing; caught several bugs over the weekend; and made sure to pull me in to fix them as opposed to fixing them on her own.

We are very proud of the software we shipped and are looking forward to more projects over the next 10 weeks.


## ...Looking Forward (Weeks 5 & 6)

This week and next we are working on module 2, where are learning to work with SQL databases. I've worked with SQL lightly before, but not in a capacity like we will be. This will be completely new and I'm excited for it. Bring it on.

## Side Projects and Ideas

In my (lack of) free time, I've been looking for a side project to work on. My "problem" is that I want this project to relate to my passions. Now some of these could be really easily: display a recipe from a text file; make a PokeDex that reads a text file (makeshift DB) and display information on a selected pokemon; etc. However, I tend towards more complex projects (a blessing and a curse). 

I've been wanting to create a new check-in system for my taekwondo school as well as a student portal. Both of these will require a database backend as well as a desktop app/web app front-end, respectively. Another idea has been to create a tournament management system.

I would LOVE to create something for my cosplay work, but haven't figured anything out yet. Got any ideas? Please throw them my way.

So, my "problem" has been trying to land on a side project to work on *now*. Without any of the knowledge I'll be gaining later. I wouldn't mind teaching myself some more of this to get these projects going, however, with the amount of time/energy I have committed to the course load (as well as, you know, life), I'm not sure I have the ability to learn those other things right now and will need a project that either builds into those or just something like to keep me fresh.