DEV Community: Daniel Gruitt

Northcoders Week 3: Object-Oriented Pokémon ⚡

Daniel Gruitt — Mon, 18 Dec 2023 08:19:28 +0000

It's that time again, another week, another blog and it's been a very different vibe this week. I have been all consumed by code and the pieces are slowly starting to fit together.

Before I go through the week I just want to mention Northcoders and how great they have been so far. It's abundantly clear that when you are on this course, they genuinely care about your mental health and do everything they can to help ease the pressure.
There are about 160 people on the course spread across the three disciplines, software, cloud and data engineering. In the mornings there are group lectures on zoom which then split down to smaller 30 student classrooms. We have all been assigned into smaller groups that each have a tutor assigned and we pair-program daily and have constant access to help from all the tutors. It’s very well organised and the backend system they use is excellent.

Learning to code in such a short time is challenging and so it's important to have this kind of supportive structure. At no point have I felt like I am being left to fend for myself, but at the same time I am being challenged to find the answers myself.

And with that out the way, on to week 3:

Week 3

Recursion
Recursion
Recursion

You get the gist. This week started with an introduction to recursion. The way this was dealt with on the course was clever as it took existing methods and practices we were all used to and made us rethink them with a recursive view. This is a great example of how the learning structure plays out each week. We learn a concept, use documentation and practice to solidify it for a day and then move on. At first this can be quite jarring as you don't get the opportunity to master every concept, but that's not the point here, it's just to give us a knowledge base that we can use in the future. I can confidently tell you what recursion is, and that is the point.

Next up is OOP (object originated programming) and to break the mould I literally just explained, this was something that we needed to spend the rest of the week on. The reason? This is the very foundation of being a good JavaScript developer. The aim was to get us to create and use objects and build a program that uses this method of programming. Up until this point we were using functional programming which is viable of course, but now we are starting to use that logic in a new way. 👨‍💻

The next few days were keyword heavy and it was quite daunting but as they layered it up it all made sense. I expect this kind of teaching can be hard for the tutors as they go through various concepts like using Object.create() to explain the concept of inheritance and prototypes, but then the next day replace it with class based objects and new ways to create objects that are different from the preceding days. I do however really appreciate that they show us all the syntax s that we may come across in future roles in tech.

Also, my new favourite phrase is Syntactic sugar 🍬

The week culminated in a 2 day sprint all about Pokémon and using all we had learnt that week to create various objects that interacted with each other. This was a smart way to teach us as we all had some vague familiarity of Pokémon and so it brought a lot of fun to the days. We more often than not pair program on the course and this week I was with fellow student Olivia, I'm sure she won't mind me mentioning her here. We had a great time chatting and paired well. It's so refreshing to share a passion like this with someone else. We laughed a lot about our terrible knowledge about Pokémon, but what was great was having someone to chat to who had great ideas and vocalised them well.

Also I have never said the word Rattata so many times, crying with laughter. 🐀

We actually left Friday a little frustrated as we could not solve a particular issue in our code, we had created what felt like 100s of tests in Jest, tried everything and yet could not get the last green tick. ❌

This does bring up an interesting facet of my brain. I really struggled to detach from this week due to how intense the week had been, albeit on a lighter subject matter (and less sad tears/financial burdens). On Friday evening I dreamt in code, I remember it clearly and it felt very matrix-like. The next day, I opened my laptop to that same problem, wrote 5 lines of code without really thinking and it fixed that issue we had. I seem to absorb and process information in my subconscious and I feel this is something I can use to my advantage.

This has kind of reassured me that while sometimes in the moment it may feel like it's all too much to overcome and learn, but with some time, my brain will sort it all out and understand it eventually.

Always give yourself time, it's not a race.

And that's week 3. It was a lot more positive that week 2 and I ended up feeling great and excited about my future as a software engineer. I know I will have some very bumpy roads ahead, but what I am learning is that I am capable, and I can do this. I will just do it at my own pace.. but also, if in doubt, I just need to have a matrix themed dream and the next day all should be well.

See you next week. I may or may not have an exam… and then Christmas! 🎄

As always, happy coding and you can find me on LinkedIn where I should post more.

Northcoders Week 2: Shut up and take my money! 💷

Daniel Gruitt — Mon, 11 Dec 2023 22:06:07 +0000

So another week has gone by and I somehow survived it. When I initially decided to do a career switch, I knew that it would be hard, testing all aspects of my sanity, but this week was something else. I have had the most intense sense of imposter syndrome, coupled with days of absolute joy and the odd tear thrown in for good measure.

So without further ado;

Week 2

The week started with a really interesting lecture about TDD (Test Driven Development). I actually knew of this practice before I started the course because @thekimmykola (my plan is to mention Kim in every blog) had introduced me to it very early on. Interestingly I have since spoken enthusiastically to lots of programmers (no names shall be given) about this and they have not used it which speaks volumes to how thorough Northcoders are being. 👍🏻

<< _computer fan intensifies_ >>

I have mentioned before about how I love problem solving, and the very nature of using TDD is all about breaking a problem down prior to even writing code. It's great, and suits my workflow perfectly. I picked this up quickly and now have a strong sense of how to utilise the red / green / refactor to help me code better, and cleaner.
I also love green ticks; ✅ it's the endorphin hit I need and will never get tired of. Also, Jest conjures happy images in my mind—also a win.🃏

<< _screen flickering intensifies_ >>

We moved through the week looking at how each data type is referenced in memory and this was initially a daunting topic as I assumed I didn't understand the inner workings of my computer, that's just a bunch of wires, right? But actually this turned into a great lecture about how Javascript specifically deals with references, inputs and outputs. Cool stuff! I felt like a real computer wizard by the end. 🧙🏻

<< _computer randomly crashes_ >>

The idea of pure functions was the topic later that week, and the concept seems simple now that we have covered it. I know that Javascript can come across a bit obtuse sometimes and I'm sure that idea will become more apparent but I appreciate the specificity of how javascript handles its functions. I’m curious to see how this idea will evolve as our code gets longer and more complex.

<< 💀_computer death_ 💀 >>

That's right. My computer died, right at the start of a coding bootcamp, you know the course that relies entirely on computers.

To put this into perspective, I need to explain a bit about money. 💷

Doing a bootcamp is not free, that much is probably obvious. But, I did get a government funded scholarship to do this course (huzzah!). But that covers the cost of the course offered by Northcoders, that's it, not the surviving 4+ months part.

I have saved as much money as I could, and I have just enough to survive without borrowing any money, but it does mean I basically have no money spare to have any real fun with or for damage control. This may seem like a risky move, but I believe in myself to do this and so I am ‘risking it for a biscuit’ where a biscuit is a job in tech that pays money, and I guess I could buy biscuits with said tech money. 🍪

I do feel that what the government offers is great to get started in tech, but it would be great to have access to a fund to help with living costs as it's a constant source of anxiety. But it is what it is and now I have to solve this dead macbook problem.

I eventually had to borrow money from myself to get a refurbished macbook pro that should last me a few years. Clearly my ageing 2015 macbook has a vendetta against me, in its defence I was bad mouthing it just last week. I will have to just swallow the cost somehow and push on.

I stayed up way too late making sure the new one was ready for the next day and reinstalling basically everything, luckily I'm almost entirely cloud based now so files are not lost, and also thanks github and northcoders for telling me to push everything everyday, you saved me! I did have to spend a bit too much time with Oh My ZSH so that my terminal was pretty again, something I take VERY seriously. In the end, it’s all done, I can now actually have a multi monitor setup without my macbook's fan disturbing my colleagues on other floors of the building.

+1 for productivity, -1500 for my wallet.

The end of the week was Higher order functions and… closure. Yeah, that. If you don't know what closure is then good for you, you are free, if you do then hopefully you will understand my pain. This was hard, and it's a real jump in complexity. I was broken for the best part of a day and a half. I could probably tell you, with diagrams what closure is, but I might look like I've lost the plot a bit. What I will say is that if you are struggling to understand it, then try using a sketched out execution context diagram. It helps massively to visualise what's going on, but even then it can be a real mind bender. This is the first time I realised how complex programming can get, naive possibly, but if you had explained to me this is what I would have needed to know months ago then maybe I wouldn't be writing this blog today.

I finished the week feeling very broken, sad and drowning in imposter syndrome. This tested my ability considerably, but the tutors reassured me at every step that my progress, and also confusion was totally normal. I chatted on zoom to my class about my experience of the previous days and was somewhat reassured to see that my classmates felt very similar. I'm pretty open about how emotions affect my learning, so I often volunteer to talk about it openly, making it relatable for those who may find it difficult.

I did get to end my week with a Christmas party 🎄 at my co-working space, although I really struggled to switch off the code in my brain so had a few conversations with colleagues with a kind of matrix code in my peripheral vision.

Top tip:
Go outside and see nature, 🌳
it helps massively.

I hope this has been an enjoyable read, it felt horrible to experience but is a more lighthearted reflection. I may be financially poorer than in week 1, but a tiny bit wiser, and that's called...closure. (shudders 🫠).

As always, happy coding and you can find me on LinkedIn where I still don't post enough.

Northcoders Week 1: Mountains to climb, paths to choose 🧙🏻

Daniel Gruitt — Wed, 06 Dec 2023 21:45:49 +0000

This blog was actually intended to be put out nicely and neatly at the end of week 1 of my boot camp experience. But as it is in the real world, not everything goes exactly to plan as my blog this week and next will pertain to. It's been a tough entry into the world of tech, but I’m still here, still smiling, albeit with strained eyes.

For those of you who don't know already, Northcoders is an industry-leading software development training and solutions provider. They offer cloud, data and software engineering bootcamps either via self funding or via a government scholarship program. I have opted to enrol on the software engineering bootcamp which gives you the skills to become a full stack developer, mainly using JavaScript as the jumping off point.

Now I should mention that I do not have a history in writing code, but whilst on my Graphic Design & Communication BA we did do a module on front end web development which was a lot of fun and really piqued my interest, but was something I could not fully explore due to the constraints of my course.

Flash forward to November 27th and I started my bootcamp after many months of preparation, saving money and a lot of anxiety…

Week 1

Northcoders have an extensive online platform that is used throughout the course and it is top class. It tracks your progress as you go along and is intuitive and well designed so kudos to the engineers behind the scenes. Now in the interest of business I’m not going to recant to you the everyday tasks and modules we are covering, just more a brief overview of what the experience is like as I want to be as open as possible in regards to what it is like to switch careers after many years in a different field and of a certain age.

I am doing this course completely remotely from Devon, although I do wish there was an option to meet up with fellow students as per the Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham and Newcastle offices. (South-coders?!) but remote is also fine as I get to do the majority of the course in my coworking space and that's fine by me!

As you would expect the first day is a lot of admin, introductions and laying out what the course will be like for the duration of the 13 weeks. The structure is great and really allows the right amount of time for each concept to take hold whilst also not overdoing it so you don't get lost in a rabbit hole of learning. You can see the general course specifics here.

We had a crash course on command line which is something that we should already know due to the (60 hour!) pre-course material so I was already pretty comfortable with that, and we also moved over to git and github as they for the foundations of how NC operate. I actually had an entertaining session with my private tutor Kim way back when about git and I legitimately thought it sounded like nonsense, but flash forward and now I am SO grateful to her for introducing me to git, github, command line and oh my ZSH when she did because it meant this first day was a lot more bearable.

Throughout the week we moved over various topics such as thread of execution, call stack, variable environments and the general way Javascript executes code. It often feels very daunting as this kind of understanding was something I always assumed I was not intelligent enough to understand. But as you will see, this thought process is just a symptom of imposter syndrome which is a whole blog of its own (and coincidentally a lecture later on). The way that these concepts were introduced and explained was excellent and it helps that they use very visual representations of them and treat us all with respect with the questions we had.

Later in the week we had a great lecture about how we as software engineers break down a problem. I think we are all guilty of seeing a problem and jumping to the most logical solution, I mean who doesn't love a green tick ✅(looking at you Jest) but this lecture was really a lesson in restraint. I had a big realisation, the reason I like to code so much is because I love problem solving. I love the act of breaking down a problem, input, output, use case, edge case, the works. I don't know the official jargon for each step (yet) but the concepts fascinate me. But even without looking at code, I love to sit and use a pen and paper to think about what I am being asked to output, essentially I like the human language of pseudo-coding, it's real, tangible and simple. It actually reminds me about when many years ago on my Graphic Design course we were told not to use computers to solve design problems but to use pen and paper and discussion first. It helps to foster a healthier mentality, especially within teams (nicely done Northcoders!).

Now it wouldn't be 2023 without someone on the internet mentioning chatGPT and yes, it is talked about extensively on this course. They are not vilifying the software, but also they do not encourage its use as learners. Essentially ChatGPT has the ability to write code, solve Katas and be a generally helpful little buddy in most workflows. The extent to which it does so correctly is up to personal interpretation. But I have spent this money and risked everything to learn to code, not to learn to prompt something to code for me. If I input a kata into it and it solves it I get a nice green tick… but that's all I get. I don't get the sometimes hours of debugging that comes with being a learner, and you know what? That's the bit I like. I like to fail as it means I explore more options, reach out for support and speak to my peers, and to me that's better than a computer telling me what to do, although I'm sure my future will be using lots of generative models and that's ok too.

The week ended with a (hilarious) day of HTML & CSS. I have done a fair bit of this in the past and so it was ok, it was taught briefly so that we spent most of the day experimenting with various online Northcoders curated courses to help us battle it all. It's not something that I overly enjoy at this stage, but that comes from frustration with the tools I'm using. I have the ability to create a beautiful website at the design stage with the adobe suite or Figma, but being the designer and engineer at the same time was not easy. This will of course get better with time. I did however show my class the awful 90s cat website I managed to scramble together by the end of the day. 😸

The week finished and I felt elated. I have worked so hard to get to this point and it was everything I wanted and more. It's hard work and thankfully tests my abilities like I never imagined but that's exciting. I love learning and to get this opportunity again is just brilliant.

Some topics covered this week that I found interesting

Thread of execution
Pseudo-Coding
devdocs.io (my hero)
regexr.com (regex === 🫠)

I want to shout out to my classmates who I paired with this week, it's a new kind of work structure. Most of us are used to sitting at home coding and asking our cats for help. So, it was great to change that and have real human interactions, and do something we all love.

Thanks for sticking with this blog, I appreciate it's a bit long winded, but I actually find it therapeutic to spew it all out, helps me reflect on the week gone by so you're stuck with me for the next 13 weeks!

Next week is absolute chaos and a £1,500 mistake 💻 === 💀

As always, happy coding and you can find me on LinkedIn where I don't post enough.

Northcoders Week 1: Mountains to climb, paths to choose 🧙🏻

Daniel Gruitt — Wed, 06 Dec 2023 21:45:49 +0000

Flash forward to November 27th and I started my bootcamp after many months of preparation, saving money and a lot of anxiety…

Week 1

Some topics covered this week that I found interesting

Thread of execution
Pseudo-Coding
devdocs.io (my hero)
regexr.com (regex === 🫠)

Next week is absolute chaos and a £1,500 mistake 💻 === 💀

As always, happy coding and you can find me on LinkedIn where I don't post enough.

Where does the code live?

Daniel Gruitt — Sun, 03 Dec 2023 16:00:34 +0000

👋 Hi, my name is Dan & I know where the code lives.

To better understand this silly thought, I have to explain why I am even here. I’m currently on a career switch from humble graphic designer to software engineer. This decision was made initially on a whim, but now has morphed into an obsession unlike any I have experienced before.

I have been a graphic designer on and off for many years and have always enjoyed it. I have been able to work with great clients (and not so great ones) and have been able to form some great relationships and also work on some really cool projects. In recent years however I have been watching the world change around me and realised that I have an obsession with technology that was not being satisfied in my work.

I won't talk in depth about the pandemic as it's not a fun topic, but let's just say that it did not treat me well, and work was very hard. So flash forward (phew!) to 2023 and I'm working (after a design hiatus) in a fabulous co-working space, The Generator, on the quay in my hometown, Exeter. I met an absolute legend called Kim Diep (@thekimmykola). I kind of accidentally cornered her at lunch and we had a laugh about it as it was her first day in the co-work space, and about her 3rd day in Devon. We got to chatting and it so happens Kim is a software engineer. You may know Kim, but if you don't, she is infectiously happy, endlessly talented and super inspiring and she eventually convinced me to think about a career change. During a lunchtime chat I asked Kim where the code lives. It felt innocent enough but now it's my ‘look how far you’ve come’ milestone.

So fast forward to today. I have spent months learning everything I can about code, working multiple jobs, saving every penny, all so I can switch directions and satisfy that itch that is lacking in my life. I am so grateful to Kim and everyone in The Generator for all the support, love (and biscuits) that has allowed me this opportunity. I do feel that the financial entry point to tech is problematic, but that's a blog for another day.

Now as I go full time into tech, I thought it would be nice to document it so you can watch me lose my mind learning to be a software engineer. I absolutely know that this will be hard, it will test me and I may cry a bit but that's ok, I am the most determined i have ever been in my life.

I hope you will enjoy following along with me as I make this change. If you are already in tech, I'd love to hear your journey, what you are up to, and if not then I hope my future ramblings will inspire you to make changes, if you so wish.

Dan (Gruitt.dev) ⬅️ I should probably buy this domain.

✍🏻Follow me on LinkedIn

🗣️ Shoutouts:

🏢 The Generator - Best co-working space in Exeter

👨‍💻 Curiously Code - Tech meetup in Exeter

🧑‍🎓Northcoders - Coding bootcamp extraordinaires