...becoming a developer

Thoroughly enjoying my time thus far.  Dev Bootcamp is exactly as advertised.

We begin each day with a non-technical activity.  Monday we did introductions and played a fun programming-related team-building exercise.  Tuesday we learned about "engineering empathy" and how to give constructive feedback to each other.  Wednesday we did yoga for an hour.  I really enjoy that this experience focuses not just on teaching programming but on developing well-balanced professionals.

A morning lecture begins the technical part of our day, followed by an hour or two of coding in pairs.  We break for lunch for about an hour and a half, though most people don't go for nearly that long.  There are plenty of fast food options within a few blocks, though once I get settled, I'd like to begin packing my own food.  After lunch we return to an afternoon lecture, followed by coding for the remainder of the day (and into the night).  That's the basic rhythm of our day.

The aspect of this experience I've enjoyed learning the most so far is how to "pair program".  When I first read about this concept, it seemed formal and intimidating, but now that I've practiced it for three days now (to the tune of about 30 hours) it feels perfectly natural.  In my mind I had pictured two people fighting over a keyboard and grabbing the mouse from one another.  Fortunately each workstation is equipped with two of each.  I had pictured one person silently writing code while the other watched, and then switching at some measured interval.  This couldn't be further from reality.  At the beginning of each problem, my pair and I discuss the assignment and how we'd like to approach it.  We may sketch out a few things on a whiteboard to clarify our ideas and begin to synthesize a solution.  We then decide who is going to "take the wheel" and start writing code.  We stick to this setup while we hash our a rough draft, but once we've gotten deep into the problem, the "driver"/"navigator" roles fall away and ideas flow freely onto the screen in a conversational back-and-forth.  No one person is the author of this code, it is truly a collaborative work.  While it is satisfying to solve a problem on your own, solving through collaboration is intensely rewarding.

I've been playing around with a silly little project to keep myself occupied before I start at DBC.  While I have done really well on the short, bite-sized exercises that were part of the DBC prep-work and enjoyed tacking some of the project Euler problems, when I start trying something from scratch, things quickly get out of control.  I started with a simple text-based game all in one file.  After deciding I should make it truly object-oriented, I separated all the classes into different files.  Finally, I decided I should try and make it in true model-view-controller style and further complicated things for myself.

...is the worst thing in the world!