A Revival - Starting From Zero!

Hello again! If you're unfamiliar with this blog, I used to write about my various adventures while living in Tokyo. Since moving back to the US it has basically lain dormant, but as I'm about to start a new adventure, now is the perfect time to resurrect it!

Recently, I was accepted into General Assembly's Web Development Immersive program - a twelve-week coding bootcamp that should, upon conclusion, prepare me for either an internship or position as a junior web developer. More importantly, I should be able to build websites, apps - basically anything you see online (within reason!), I should be able to make, or at least have a reasonable idea of how it was made, even if I'm personally not skilled enough to do it myself. If you'd like to know more about the program, here is the link: https://generalassemb.ly/education/web-development-immersive/san-francisco

I decided to chronicle my experience going through one of these bootcamps for a few reasons. These are a relatively new premise, and on the surface, they sound amazing! Spend twelve weeks learning to code, and then when you come out you can land a great job! The idea is that while you might learn more *stuff* getting a four-year Computer Science degree, the percentage of what you've learned that will have on-the-job applications is much smaller. Apprenticeships and vocational schools have been mostly pushed out by the "need" for a college degree, but these programs are founded on the idea that you can condense the "important" parts of that learning into a much smaller time frame, and are ideal for people that, for one reason or another, don't want to go back and get another four-year degree. Detractors will claim that there is no way that you can be ready after a mere twelve weeks, and there is a substantial investment required (a $10,000 tuition cost, give or take), not to mention that by all accounts they are incredibly taxing, so there are certainly facets that will give you pause before signing up. Obviously, I am sold on the premise, but if you aren't, dear reader, then you can follow along with my journey, and we will see where we end up!

I am going to try my hardest, but if the going gets tough, hopefully the fact that everyone is here following my progress and cheering me on will keep me going, and prevent me from falling into a depression spiral (I don't actually expect this to happen, but hey, safety net!).

So my goals from this blog are - show what it's like to take one of these courses, leech encouragement from my followers, and prove that I can become an awesome web developer!

As for how I ended up here - programming is something I've wanted to learn since high school, but I took a different route in college (History and East Asian Studies double major! The job offers are not exactly rolling in...), and though I've made a number of start/stop attempts to teach myself, it is just damn hard! It isn't just that there's a lack of motivation, or that there are no good tutorials (there are), or that you don't have good direction, or anyone to turn to for assistance, or the fact that most people really just have a *life* that they want to live in their time after work - it is all of them at once, which unfortunately makes it incredibly easy to become sidetracked (as anyone who has ever tried to self-study anything can tell you).

Why programming? I love games, I love solving puzzles, the money is good, and basically every single one of my friends is doing something computer-related. Quite honestly, the last one (about the friends) is probably the biggest factor. I know almost nothing about programming, or computers! I took a computer science class in high school, and learned some basic C++, but that barely counts! But I'm a huge nerd, my friends are all huge nerds, and if we like all of the same hobbies, we'd presumably like the same jobs as well! Flawless logic, I know. I might as well be a Vulcan.

So there you go! I have signed up for a coding bootcamp with essentially no prior coding knowledge! We will see how it turns out! If you're in a similar boat (no prior knowledge, considering signing up for one), hopefully this blog (when complete) can help you decide!

This blog is currently being written with blogspot's "compose" feature, so I am not even using basic HTML at the moment (as you no doubt could tell, if you are familiar with such things). It should be pretty interesting to track my progress!

The next entry will discuss the application process and preparation for the course!