59 Days to Become a Full-Stack Developer

#bootcamp #beginners #career #learning

Yes, you read this right. 59 days was all I had to start this new career. No, I do not think I am a complete full-stack developer, but I can assure you that I am on the right path.

How? You ask me, so I'll tell you a little story...

My Background

I am a Brazilian living in Canada. Before coming to this cold and wonderful place, I used to live in Rio de Janeiro, or as we call it: Hell de Janeiro... 😈 super hot in there 🔥

I used to be an intellectual property lawyer and worked in a great firm with Italian brands (yes, those that you are thinking of...no, never got a car, a purse or anything else...).

After realizing that life there was not what we wanted, my husband and I decided to move to Toronto. I decided I was going to study Culinary Management. -Yes, it's a big change-.

After 3 years of cooking, I realized that I was not happy, I loved every minute, but that wasn't what I wanted to do for the rest of my life, nor was law. So I decided to change....but, change to what? 🤷‍♀️ 🤔

My husband is a Project Manager and said I should try software development again (yes, I did 6 months in Brazil).

So, before quitting and deciding to do some coding, I took a few online courses, just to be sure that I liked that. And do you know what? I LOVED! Every single thing in this field makes me want to be better, to learn more and to conquer more. 💪

And that's when the 59 days come to the story...

Coding Bootcamp

I registered to General Assembly Toronto* (previously known as Bitmaker Labs) for their Software Engineering Immersive. 3 months of intense and full time course where we learned a good range of subjects like:

HTML, CSS, JS, jQuery
Node.js, MongoDb, Mongoose
Python, Django, and PostgreSQL
React and Redux

We had classes all day + homework + projects + extracurricular studies... 💻

So, in 59 business days, our amazing teacher taught us the base of all these subjects, a few other extracurricular things, and the most important thing: how to continue after the Bootcamp. Oh! And, of course, that we need to read the docs! 📖

It was intense, fierce and profound, there were dark days, but we had each other to lean on, my classmates and I became a family (after all, we were seeing each other more than our actual family). It was one of the most amazing experiences I had so far and from that, all I can say is: