Alright, day one of HR is in the books. It was a long day, and perhaps a taste of what's to come: marathon learning, fun (and challenging) pair programming, new tools, and more.
Things I liked
Staff support.
I'm tired. Three weeks from now, at this point in the night, that might turn into 'I'm exhausted'. Burnout, stress, anxiety. I can see how the pace of the course can lead to negativity.
But the staff for my group of 40 or so students seems large enough, engaged enough, and adept enough to help us navigate the obstacles we'll encounter and to help steady the emotional seas. We'll see.
Pair Programming
My partner was great. Communicative, sharing, and a good coder. I have a lot of room to grow in the pair programming department, but today was a strong start and an encouraging first taste of an important part of this experience.
Things I didn't like
Catch-up work.
I had left a pre-course item unattended and I was asked to complete the 45 minute (timed) assignment tonight. At the end of a long day first day, I thought it was a big ask. I would prefer to have been alerted - if I was alerted at all - before the end of last week, or even over the weekend.
Better yet, in the deluge of emails and resources that were sent our way, perhaps the program should send automated feedback/progress/alerts to students based on submitted work.
Technical Lectures that under-deliver
Our final 1.5 hours of the day was spent in a lecture that I think could've been distilled to five slides in a presentation. The program emphasizes learning by doing, so to sit through content that has more words than action was disappointing. My main takeaways from the lecture were that
-
variables are labels for values.
- all variable assignments pass through to a value.
a value is a 'parcel of information that represents a distinct idea'.
While these were presented almost as mystical axioms in a lecture that was promised to blow our minds, I left feeling underwhelmed.
To bring these ideas into reality - you know, to make them practical and usable - I'd have liked to know:
How are these terms commonly misunderstood. What are the pitfalls of that misunderstanding?
And then perhaps see those questions answered with examples in code.
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