What a front-end development boot camp may make you feel
Please read these instructions carefully. Going through a boot camp may have some interesting side effects. Some are listed below, but this list is all but exhaustive.
Enthusiasm
In January, I was absolutely excited about starting a boot camp. Any subject would have been fantastic for me: I love the bare idea itself of learning! But adding to my skills some other languages — this time more in the tech spectrum — seemed especially thrilling.
Confusion
Quickly I felt lost. I had to learn so many things at once, at such a fast pace! Even HTML and CSS were new to me… I started to wonder, “what did I get myself into?” But hey, choosing to go through a boot camp is a huge investment, so I needed to keep it up! And I am glad that I did!
Satisfaction
Oh god it felt good to hand in my first project! With this news website called Maple News (maple syrup lover 🙋♀️), I took the opportunity to try out many CSS properties, to explore flexbox and grid layouts and, of course, to add real news about maple syrup (you can’t be fake about maple syrup!) It’s so satisfying to feel that I have learned something that I can use to make something valuable.
Impatience
Even if a boot camp is quite intense, I feel at times that it’s not going fast enough for my thirst for learning! My second project included only a tiny touch of JavaScript, and I could quickly see the power of this language, so it felt hard to have to wait for the next week to do more with it. But one needs to trust the process. The boot camp at Technigo is designed in a way that each weekly project is built by using mastered material from the previous weeks plus adding a new brick to it, and some bricks take more time to figure out how to place them, that’s all.
Pride
For some projects, I feel so proud of myself. Sometimes because I pushed my limits (at the time) in terms of tech stuff, but sometimes it’s the project as a whole that makes me proud. In one of the first weeks, the weekly goal was to build a digital version of the classical board game Guess Who. We had some images and descriptions already provided, but I decided to make my own version: Guess Paw includes cute cat paws instead of faces, some nice customised alerts and some details to go further in my learning.
Regret
No, no regret about going through the boot camp: regret sometimes about my desire to always push my limits further. For my first project by myself using React, the requirements were to build a survey-like webpage including at least 3 questions of which at least one with dropdown menu and one with radio buttons. Of course I decided to make a story maker that customises a story according to the answers provided by the user. Of course I had 13 questions. Of course I used all possible types of input: radio buttons, dropdown, single checkbox, multiple checkboxes, text, range slider… Of course I implemented random choices so if the user doesn’t make a choice, one will be made for them. Of course I added a non-binary option so it was more complex to customise the story. And so on… I was very happy with my project (enough to share my Story Factory with you!), but I have to be honest, I felt a bit of regret…
Happiness
But the strongest feeling of all is happiness. And happiness is made of all these feelings (enthusiasm, confusion, satisfaction, impatience, pride, regret). They are all part of the process that allows me to feel that I have found my way, that I am on the right path for me to grow and to be able to bring something valuable to my future workplace. I am confident that someone will see me for what I am: a happy and skilled front-end developer.
