My name is Mason Ellwood, and I’m currently working on Flatiron School’s Online Full Stack Web Development Program. Each week, I’ll be writing about my experience, what I’m learning, and tips on learning to code.
Many of my friends have asked me how I have liked The Flatiron School so far. I usually tell them it is great, and this and that… But the fact of the matter is that it is a a lot of work. Coming into this curriculum I did not have a lot of programming experience. And when I say “not a lot” I mean I have done simple loops to incorporate a repetitive task, like placing a div after a certain amount of something. Or worked a lot with add code, but other than that, i would say i was just grazing the surface.
As the months have progressed, I keep thinking I am just barely scraping by. It is a lot of information to keep track of and I am always dreading the next lesson, on the chance that I am just digging myself further into the confusion pit I was in with the last lesson.
Which I touched base on a few lessons back, and having to go back over a large portion of the material to really let it sink in. But with this, I came to the realization that I really do know this stuff. I am able to keep up speaking with my programming friends and am now able to comprehend and think of new ways that a task should be completed on a larger scale, rather than just moving or placing a div with Javascript.
My friend at SiteLock, who operates as a designer there, was working on a problem with Javascript in his free time. It was a calculator that grabbed a number and performed basic operations on it. This was the second time that he has told me about this problem that he had and the first time he told me was much different than how I see it now. Actually completing this task was like a plane flying over my head. I could see where it was going, and where it was going to land, but that was about it. Just a distant object that did something.
But now it is as if the plane smacked me right in the face.
I can now see the pilot, what type of plane it is, how fast it it going, and all other details involved in a plane that close. I can see the big picture, and see where he went wrong with logic, and how to correct it.
I was finding myself not excited about code, but now that I have begun to dive deeper into the curriculum, find myself more and more excited about the new lesson. It is like for me in college, chemistry. I know chemistry was cool, I know what it could unlock if I spend time diving into it, but only ever looking at it from a distance. But if I would have spent the time really figuring out how everything worked opens up a whole other world! This is what this school has done for me. It has unlocked a new way of seeing code and thought processes to go along with that. The Flatiron School has helped me grasp concepts that I thought to be too distant for me to understand, and displayed the information in a way that it was easily obtainable.