On the eve of my final bootcamp project presentation, I've had plenty of time to reflect over my time spent the last 15 weeks in school, bunkered down in my apartment, face glued to my computer screen, and wasting away the hours trying to learn a new concept I had never been even remotely familiar with: software engineering.
I truly cannot believe I've made it to the point I have, with all of the ups and downs, frustrating moments trying to learn a new language, and trying to understand why certain things operate the way they do. "This feels like it should be easier", "Why cant this work the way I want it to work?", "Whats the point of learning this when I probably won't use it?". These are all questions I frequently asked myself over the course of coding bootcamp, and questions I don't believe I could have truly understood until this point.
My overzealous self could not comprehend that it really does take a brick by brick, stone by stone, built from the ground up approach when learning how to code. "Why did we even learn vanilla javascript in the first few weeks when we are completely switching to a new JS library in React?" "What was the point of even learning Sinatra when we are switching to Ruby on Rails next week?" I now realize that even the smallest of concepts and details build off one another, and, in order to understand fun functionalities like a .map or a .filter, you must first understand what an array is, how we can access an array, and what can be done with arrays. Concepts like these seem silly and trivial, but there is truly no skipping steps while learning how to code.
School was frustrating at times because of this simple idea. And, unlike conventional school in university, I didn't believe I could miss a lesson or skip over a concept in order to get further ahead - you really must take a hands-on and fully in depth approach in order to truly understand and apply the things you learn.
With this understanding also comes the understanding that software engineering is an ever evolving science which breeds new languages, new software libraries, new concepts on every given day. There will always be more to learn and it is ok to accept that you do not know everything there is to know. But it's imperative to keep in mind what i've reflected over above. Learning takes time, practice, dedication, and persistence.
Even after 15 weeks, my imposter syndrome still gets ahold of me. And while I do often question whether I can fair in this industry as a software dev, I find solace in the fact that these are emotions I experienced even WHILE in coding bootcamp. And despite those feelings I experience, here I stand, 3 days from graduation, with a fully built-out single page web application that exemplifies all of the things I've learned over the last 15 weeks, and I am extremely proud of what I've built.
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