Holy… I made it past the first month of Makers! Looking back on it, a month ago I was barely keeping up with basic Ruby syntax and couldn’t even put a class together, now look at us. We have been building web apps and even built a clone of Airbnb using pure Ruby and PostgreSQL and an app that has the basic functionality of Twitter. I also had a lot of fun building a Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lizard and Spock game.
Sadly I am still quite lacking on my front-end skills in html and css so I hope I can find some time in the next two months to work on them, while mastering Javascript and the rest.
It really has been quite the rollercoaster ride. Pretty sure most of us have gone through the five stages of coding:
- Denial
We set our eyes on the coding task and immediately deny that we have the ability to tackle the task, or just feel we’re not ready for it yet. We’ve only learned the required concept a day ago and now you want me to build a whole app? No way!
2. Anger
It could be anger at ourselves, for not progressing far enough in the week, or feeling like we should have spent more time on that concept we were having trouble wrapping our head around. Or, feeling rather angry that this was set for you in the first place! I mean, what were they thinking? This isn’t the right level of difficulty, we need more time!
3. Bargaining
Right, I guess I could do this. But hear my words, I probably won’t finish it and might just scratch the surface for the functionalities implemented. I’ll do as much as I can for this, but this may turn out badly. I might ask for help when I’m stuck but at least I’m trying right?
4. Depression
Wow, I’ve made a start and there’s code in my folder. But I’ve been stuck on that one error for hours and I have no idea how to crack it. Maybe I’m just not cut out for coding and maybe I’m not smart enough for this. Everyone else seem to have made progress in their project and speak about things that I don’t understand, where did I go wrong?
5. Acceptance
Ah last but not least, the eventual acceptance. Because let’s face it, we always get to point when we have a Eureka moment and things work again (why?) or a solution might come to us out of nowhere. No matter how it happens, we almost always get to the bottom of the bug or completing a project, with or without some help (which is perfectly okay!). Once you’re done, you think back on the project fondly and feel fairly proud of what you’ve managed to achieve for attempting something new and truthfully challenging.
God knows how many times I’ve gone through the stages in the last month and yet, I am proud of what I have made so far and would gladly go through them with anyone who would like to know more — you can see some of them in my github repo here!
