Punchcode Programming Bootcamp, Day 57

Tonight is my final night of writing code for this project. As of 9:00am Wednesday morning we are officially on code freeze and not even allowed to breathe on our JSX.

And that means my 12 week journey is about to come to an end. 12 weeks of writing programs and learning through epic trial-and-error marathons and endless Stack Overflow searches is drawing to a close. And Thursday will be the (almost) grand finale. I say "almost" because there is technically one more week of school remaining and that will be filled with mock interviews, graded coding exams, resume writing and rewriting and job hunting.

But Thursday will be the big unveiling of our final project and that is much more exciting than rewriting my resume.

On Thursday we have been asked to give a short presentation about our final project. Not too much about the project itself but mostly about the story behind it. Then, we all split up into individual stations where we can demo the app in small groups and answer questions as needed. I'm looking forward to giving the presentation part and just hope I don't get too long-winded and drag my speech into Oscar-night levels of running over. I've got no shortage of talking points and facts I can bring up with regards to hunger statistics in Las Vegas.

I will need to put together some good talking points about the technology we used and the reasons behind it. It is hard to explain why we chose React for the project and fight the urge to say "That's what we learned so that's what we used". But that is partly true. We didn't use Vue because we didn't spend 4 weeks learning Vue. Is it possible that Vue is a better framework for this project? It is definitely possible. That doesn't make React a bad choice. And it doesn't mean this project can never be rewritten in Vue.

We spent 12 weeks building projects on versatile frameworks, with the final lesson being to take everything we have learned and combine it (along with some new skills) into a large final project. And that is exactly what has happened. I found myself going back through weeks of Github repos and old projects looking for clues about how to do a particular thing. I believe that none of the projects over the last 12 weeks were fluff projects that were just designed to stress me out. I mean, yes they did stress me out. But they all also taught me a lot about coding, data structures, analytical thinking and programmatic problem solving.

There is still a lot left to learn. I cannot learn everything there is under the sun. But what I did learn will build the foundation for the other things that will come up. Learning Semantic will certainly help me get a grasp of Bulma, Bootstrap (which I studied a couple of years ago and looking forward to revisiting with fresh eyes), and Styled-Components. Learning React will give me the foundation to learn Angular and/or Vue. Even learning JavaScript will give set the starting point for me to learn Solidity or C++.

The point being that even though Thursday is the "end" of this project as far as class goes, in reality its not even close to the end. Its the beginning of a much longer journey of learning new things and settling into my niche as a developer.