My Coding Bootcamp Survival Guide

So this year has been pretty crazy, I have gone from a coding bootcamp to a full Junior Software Engineer. I’ve been really lucky to get a job from a coding bootcamp and I am here to tell you it can be done. If you have just started on a bootcamp here is my mental toolbox on how you survive:

So firstly, congratulations on getting to here, you’ve made it onto a bootcamp. Whatever bootcamp you’ve signed up to, you have been chosen as you are absolutely the right people for the course, so take all the confidence you need from that.

As you’ve probably realised, writing code is hard! There’s no shame in admitting that and as you go through the course there is going to be moments where you get really stuck, in these moments when I was on my bootamp, I always thought of this quote by John F Kennedy from 1962 when talking about going to the moon:

“We choose to go to the moon in this decade not because they are easy, but because they are hard”

We take on challenges in our lives, not because they are easy but because they are hard. This is what makes us better people and this is what will make you a better coder. Find a positive affirmation that you can fall back on when you find it hard and can give you the confidence to tackle the problem again.

As on the bootcamp and as you will find in your career, you are going to have really good days where you understand new concepts and then you are gonna have really bad days. Those bad days will knock you, I still have bad days now in my job where nothing seems to work, I have colleagues who I work with who have been in the tech industry for nearly a decade and they still have bad days. Don’t worry about those days just write them off, go home, do something fun, get some sleep and start again tomorrow.

Even when you’ve had those bad days, You’ll be absolutely amazed at how much you have learned if you actually think about it. I try toapply the one minute rule at the end of each day. I sit down and think of everything I’ve done and I guarantee you will see that you’ve actually learned a hell of a lot more than you think and don’t rule out anything that you’ve learned, everything is important and positive and this stage of our careers.

Alongside the one minute rule there is the one week rule, The human brain is an amazing piece of kit and you will be amazed that concepts that made no sense a week ago, now makes perfect sense.

The bootcamp isn’t just about coding and working in teams is incredibly important, both in these walls and when you start your job. It’s important, therefore, when you start working in your teams you are honest about what you are good at and enjoy. You will find something you enjoy and other things you hate, these may even change as you do the course but be honest with each other, there’s no shame in admitting what your weaknesses are, when you come to building projects there’s no point doing things that you don’t like.

I’m gonna let you into a little secret, there is gonna be times where you can’t fix a problem and it’s driving you up the wall. You can’t code the answer yourself, so what do you do? Quite simply you go online, you search stack overflow or you find a code snippet. This is not unusual, everyone does it, however, just make sure you UNDERSTAND what the code does, think through the flow of the code, learn from it and use it.

There’s so many ways of learning which I’d previously being ignorant to. One of the ways I really started to cement my knowledge and test myself was using codewars. I must admit I wasn’t always a fan but ladies and gentlemen, codewars is a great way to learn. Take the opportunity on this journey to explore your different ways of learning. When I first started to learn to code, I did what I always did when I wanted to learn something new, buy a shed load of books and try and learn it this way. So off I went but something wasn’t right, I wasn’t learning how to code. Sure, I could tell you what an if else statement did or the different primary variables, but I felt no further on from where I started. I then started to look at other ways to learn, video tutorials on YouTube and Udemy. I was from here that I started to learn how to code. Challenge websites such as Codewars and Code Combat are a great way to do this.

Now you are in tech, make an effort to get involved your local community. No one bites and everyone is really friendly and in some cases they’ll be free food and beers. It is also a great place to network and yes, previously I thought that was all a load of corporate rubbish before I did my bootcamp course but it’s seriously not. You will meet lots of new people, some may even be a potential employer and many will want to know your story. You will also learn new stuff every time as well.

You may get to the end of the course you are on and realise that you never want to write another line of code again. Don’t despair as the Tech Industry isn’t just about coding, A successful tech team will contain not just coders but many other job roles. You only have to look at the job descriptions on an online job website and you’ll see all sorts of different roles to name a few; UI, UX, Project Management, Full-stack, Front End, Back End and DevOps and it is also important to realise that all of these roles have an equal status within an organisation, a business will need all of these roles to be successful and function successfully.

I’m pretty sure that some of you will have thought of some of these things on here already and you’ve only just started on your journey. There’s been tons written about imposter syndrome My advice to you is to learn to live with these feelings, Imposter syndrome and the feelings of inadequacy will be feelings that do not go away, in my job now, they exist, in my colleagues they exist, they are not unnatural and to accept that you are good enough and you have the skills to suceed. You are at the start of your journey. Try not to put too much expectation on yourselves, you will not perform at your best if you are putting too much pressure on yourself.

I hope this has given you some thoughts on how to survive this intense yet rewarding experience. Good luck!

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