Other than coding like a maniac for 8 hours a day, of course.

During a coding bootcamp, software development program, or other intensive tech education, you'll have a lot on your plate. Like, a lot. But there are three things you can't skip out on if you want to succeed in your classes and land a job afterwards.

Make friends with fellow students

Depending on your disposition, this might strike you as totally obvious, or way too sunshine-and-butterflies...but making friends in code school is very worthwhile.

Not only will it give you someone to turn to when you're stuck or overwhelmed, it'll help you a lot when it comes time to look for a job. A code school buddy might be willing to serve as a reference on your job application, or even help you land an interview at their company.

Plus, you might end up meeting a great crew of people.

Start putting together a portfolio

Having live examples of your code is critical when it comes to landing a job. When you send your resume off into the void, the person looking at it isn't going to have time to look through a github repo. Hell, the person looking at your resume probably won't even be a programmer.

Take the time now to learn how to deploy your projects on github pages, heroku, or another service. If you wait until the end of your program, you might find yourself too swamped with projects and job applications. But if you start on your portfolio right away, you'll have plenty of time to polish it up. And by the end of your program you'll have lots of live projects you can show potential employers.

Keep your chin up

Whoever decided to call vocational coding programs 'bootcamps' didn't mince words. There will be days when it feels like everything is stacked against you. There will be days where you wake up and just want to wrap yourself up in your blankets, burrito-style, and refuse to get out of bed. (And honestly, I recommend taking a rest day if you need it - missing a day isn't the end of the world)

But when you're working on code or talking to your peers or instructors, try to stay positive. Remember that it's okay to not understand something, and it's okay to get things wrong. The best way to learn is to keep trying.

15 minutes later starting weekend homework:

Well, apparently I am not the best at keeping a blog. My five week soiree with PHP has come to an end, and I am three days deep in the murky waters of JavaScript again. That’s right! JavaScript Round Two!

I must say, for all of the shit talking there seems to be directed at PHP on the interwebs, I personally found it pretty cool. I am longing for “->” object operators and dollar signs declaring variables. I liked classes, getters and setters. We spent two weeks solidifying object oriented programming and testing with PHPUnit. We learned how to use the framework Silex and the template engine Twig to create web apps. Then we jumped into databases and learned about SQL before splitting into groups for a week and working on another four day project.

This time around, my group and I created a mock eCommerce website where users could register with email confirmation, log in, edit their personal information and add items to a cart before checking out. It was pretty challenging, but I think we were able to present a decent MVP.

As someone who has struggled with impostor syndrome for most of my “adult” life thus far, coding has been an undertaking that has allowed me to feel like an impostor in new and exciting ways! At least once a day (if not throughout the entire day) I find myself thinking, “I have no idea what I am doing right now. How on earth will I EVER be able to do this professionally?”. Then I will miraculously fix some silly little bug, or help solve someone else’s problem and will have a lovely, fleeting sensation of success. Except for the days where that doesn’t happen and I leave class feeling like I was smacking my forehead against a brick wall for 8 hours.

I have taken to reminding myself regularly that the amount of information I have been able to digest over the past 11 weeks is pretty incredible, and even if I am not a coding genius, it is still impressive that I can hold a conversation now that would have sounded like gibberish to myself before embarking on this journey. I try my very hardest not to compare myself and my code to some of my peers. There are some who seem to take like ducks to water to the constant onslaught of new information.

In the past three days, we have been introduced to node.js(node modules, npm packages like browserify and gulp), bower, sass, using development servers, using APIs...I would say my brain is absorbing somewhere between 70-85% of it. jQuery still feels pretty awkward to me, but it is slowly making more and more sense.

Though it may not seem immediately relevant to pay tribute to David Bowie in a web development blog, I am a lover of music first and a student of technology second. I have been rocking out to his tunes all day, and they have brought up nothing but great memories. Thanks for the righteous tunes and brilliant art, Mr. Bowie! You are missed.

Before I describe all of the things we went over in week one of the Epicodus ‘Intro to Programming’ course, I will rattle off a couple of pertinent details about how Epicodus works. In order to graduate, I will need to complete five courses, each lasting five weeks. The first of those courses is the Intro class I am currently in the midst of. The final course is actually an internship with a local company that is yet to be determined. I have a few options when it comes to the three middle classes. One option is the PHP-JavaScript-Drupal track, one is the C#-JavaScript-.NET track, and the final option is the CSS-JavaScript-Design track. I am not yet sure what option I am going to chose. if you have any insights or recommendations, feel free to let me know!

I am at Epicodus M-F from 8-5, so it is pretty much a full time vocational school. It is conveniently located in downtown Portland, which for me is a 15 minute MAX ride away. There aren’t really lectures, and it is pair program driven. This means that we do not have a teacher lecturing us, we have an online curriculum that we follow along with our pair for the day. The pair agrees on a pace, we watch videos and complete exercises/build webpages. The teacher is there to help when you get really stuck, but only after you spend a good 15-20 minutes trying to figure it out with the help of your partner/other pairs. Even then, the teacher will more likely ask you questions to point you in the right direction.

I started this class with a basic knowledge of HTML and a bit of CSS, so some aspects of the first week were familiar, but for the most part I felt like I was constantly treading water. This, I expect, will become a familiar feeling over the next 5-6 months. Based on what I have heard from people well established in the tech industry, it will likely be a familiar feeling for many years to come. We were all told to embrace this sometimes uneasy feeling because it’s more or less here to stay. There are always things to learn in this industry, and it is ever changing. I am personally pretty excited to continually expand my knowledge, and the beautiful, fleeting moments of clarity are pretty fantastic.

After the first week, I have working knowledge of:

Version Control Systems. Specifically git. Git helps track and manage changes to the code we write.

GitHub.

The command line/Terminal (we are working on macs).

Atom (a text editor).

Markdown (a simple way to style text on the web. We’re mostly using it for READMEs).

HTML (hyper text markup language-provides structure for page).

CSS (cascading style sheets- describes how html elements will be displayed).

Bootstrap (a free, open source collection of tools used for creating websites/apps).

The following is the product of the week’s final code review. We fly solo for the code reviews, so this is the result of 8.5 hours of me pulling my hair out while listening to a lot of Radiohead and Morphine: 

jordan-meier.github.io