Completing a coding bootcamp like Flatiron School

I logged in to my first Zoom meeting with my Flatiron cohort lead having almost no experience in software development. Now, 5 months later, I have gained a wealth of knowledge that I look forward to building upon. But it did not come easy.

For anyone thinking about starting a bootcamp program or switching careers to software development, you are in for a great journey! One of the first things I would recommend is that you search for some free courses or lectures online before you begin your program. Make sure coding is really something you enjoy. It is challenging and tedious, but if you find yourself enjoying learning this brand new language, that is a good sign it’s a fit for you. Flatiron offers their bootcamp prep work online for free to give you a feel of what the course will be like and I would recommend taking the time to complete it.

I would also advise to block out time for the program. This may seem like a no-brainer, but learning a new language is difficult. It takes a lot of hard work and dedication and the less distraction, the better. For me, it became my full time job and I’m grateful I could block off my entire schedule. I kept to a routine of a typical work day and dedicated those hours to studying the lessons. The dedication pays off in the end when the lessons finally click and you have that “Aha!” moment that only comes from repeated practice writing code.

My final recommendation would be to treat your Github account professionally from the very beginning. Being completely new to this industry, I didn’t realize how vital Github was outside of accessing and submitting your lessons. Github becomes a giant selling point for you to potential employers as they can access and review the code you have written as well as see how often you are coding. Write strong ReadMe’s, organize and indent your code as appropriate, commit often and commit with meaningful messages. As the course went along, I realized the importance of all of this, but wish I had known from the beginning.

It has been an incredible 5 months and my best takeaway from Flatiron School is learning how to be scrappy and figure things out. Part of being a software developer is learning how to read documentation and other developers ideas or questions and understand how to implement the code into your project. Five short months ago, I would have been lost. But I feel confident in my base knowledge of Ruby and React and even more confident in my ability to learn more. This may be the end of bootcamp, but I’m just getting started!