Things just kept right on trucking along. What I really enjoy and have come to truly appreciate is that the stuff we learn builds on the previous weeks. It’s not just something new, no the way Lambda does is it, is that they reinforce what we have previously worked on. We learned about table views and every project after that incorporated a table view, we learned about navigation views and same thing. Even when we learned about protocols and persistence every project after that used them. I really appreciate that because one thing I have come to realize is that with learning coding the only way to feel confident is to keep repeating what you learn. Whether you are in a bootcamp or learning on your own you have to remember to keep it up. Redo the project if you need to, or use the concept in a different way but don’t just think you understand it and move on to the next thing. Keep repeating it, it’s the only way it’s going to stick with you.
Most of the stuff we learned these past two week is new to me, I have seen it in apps like: Alert Controllers, Picker Views, and Timers. But I had never coded them before so what I did and I would highly encourage any of you if you have the time to do is this:
- I finished the assignment first
- The next day, I didn’t do it the same day because by the time we were done it’s 9:00
pm PST and my brain doesn’t work that well at nights, I am a morning person and secondly I wanted to see how much I remembered. I watched the lecture again but this time I would try to do the coding before the instructor did. If I got stuck or couldn’t remember what he did I watched the video and I did this for the entire guided project. It feels good to know you can do it, and it helps that you know the answer is coming up so the frustration isn’t there. Doing this a 2 hour lecture can easily turn into 3 – 4 hours but so worth it. - If I have more time I try doing the assignment again, this is just for repetition and because gett
ing small projects like this is just so empowering. Also, after you struggle the first time you tend to remember what you did and then it’s not as hard and it takes much less time to get it done. So you feel like a winner.
At the end of week 6 was the sprint challenge. This sprint challenge, was really challenging I guess that’s why it has the word challenge in it. 3 hours was not enough time to get things done. Here is what I struggled with,
- The layout, I am not a designer so making things visually pleasing is hard for me but I can get a black and white blocky thing to work. However even this took me a good 30 minutes to implement. Definitely need to work on this, if any of you have any resources on this I would love to hear from you.
- I’ve been told by more experienced coders than me that this is ok but I still feel weird doing it. Not having to open previous projects, copy, pasting and modifying the code for the new project. I know I am still learning but this just bugs me. I just feel that i should be able to code a simple segue without having to resort to a previous project maybe it will come with time.
- Trying to add something new that wasn’t learned in class has me lost especially when we are told to reference the documentation. I still don’t feel comfortable making sense of it and how it’s supposed to be used. I guess this will also will click with time and more repetition.
I managed to pass the sprint and I feel comfortable moving on to our first build week. I am nervous and excited at the same time.
Claudia Maciel 