First Week

Rough Year

It's been a very rough year. I was pretty much laid off at the beginning of the year. My car was broken into and had the catalytic converter stolen. My bathroom and kitchen sinks had leaks that needed repairs. And to top it off, my AC broke and needed repairs as well. It's been tough financially and mentally.

Technically Week Five

I started the DPI program actually at the end of September, but as mentioned earlier, it's been a rough year. The AC breaking caused me to have a small panic attack. After that, I was quite depressed for like a month. Even though I had everything set up and ready to learn, I couldn't motivate myself to do it. I do have a pretty good support system of my wife and great friends and eventually I was able to push myself out of my slump.

Back to the Code Mines

So I have taught myself to program in the past. I've learned VBA, SQL, PHP, Python, and some HTML (many, many moons ago) by using books and learning websites. I wasn't sure how I was going to do in the DPI program though.

I've Been Productive

So even though I was a month late, I think I made pretty good progress! The HTML & CSS project was fascinating and I really got into it. Since I knew Python (but honestly, I've forgotten a lot of it), it made learning Ruby a bit easier. They are pretty similar. For a while I didn't have a job or school to go to, so working on these projects gave me some structure that I very much needed.

Week 2

So the next project will involve API calls. I've done a very tiny amount of that in the past, but judging on how well the material have been teaching me so far, I don't think I will have a problem. Don't get me wrong, Week 1 wasn't a cake walk, but I've been having a good time learning.

Wake