I'm going back to school… well, sort of. I thought it would be fun to work through all of the projects that I was assigned while attending the Turing School of Software and Design. I want to note how I think about the problems now, as a senior developer, and record my learnings and struggles. Spending almost a decade as a full stack web developer, I'm noticing a disconnect from the expectations of the job and some of the foundational skills that sparked my passion for coding in the first place. Let's see where this journey back to school(work) takes us.

how it all started

Ten years ago I was sitting in a newsroom, producing the local 10pm news and dreaming of a better life for myself. “What would have happened if I pushed myself to make my coding hobby a professional reality?” I thought to myself while watching the indie game Five Nights At Freddy's take the scene by storm. I spent a few years in the 90s learning how to code static websites with HTML and simple programs with BASIC reading my dad's old textbooks. I loved it so much that I took C++ and Java classes in high school, but I was young and wanted pursue a career in film or music. By the time I got to college, coding was nothing more than something I did on the side to mod a computer game or spruce up my film contracting site.

In 2016, I decided to take the risk and reignite my passion for computers. I enrolled in the Turing School of Software and Design. I was excited, anxious and overwhelmed. The curriculum embraced “just in time” learning. Unlike other popular code bootcamps, Turing spends a lot of time teaching the foundations of programming before introducing web development libraries and frameworks.

• Luhn algorithm
• Flashcards
• Paramorse
• Battleship
• Black Thursday

• Little Shop

• Rails Engine
• Clone Thumbtack

• Personal Project
• Final Assessment

my commitment

We had up to two weeks to complete each of the projects above and spent about 60-80 hours a week at school. Obviously, I don't have the freedom of focusing full time on each of these projects; however, I believe that setting a deadline for each project is necessary to force solutions and drive outcomes. I commit to spend a minimum of an hour a day and will set the delivery date for each project as double the expected time. Along with sharing the repo of each project on Github, I will also post my experience and thoughts of working through it. See you all on the other side.