The Terror and Joy — MakerSquare PreWork

Unless we haven’t met before, you know I’m an aspiring programmer. Or perhaps I can actually call myself one after pushing to github…. Or is it when I land my first job… or is it when create my first project?

Over a year ago, I embarked on the journey to learn to code. I started with a Rails Girls event that wasn’t as fruitful as I’d hoped. To their credit though, it was very welcoming and pleasant for a beginner.

After the company I worked for laid off my entire department, I looked for QA work, was largely unsuccessful because of my lack of hardcore tech skills as mine were learned on the fly through a mixture of thoughtful question asking, and meticulous notes — how else are you to learn to navigate the Terminal Application without instruction? I enrolled in a QA 6-week Bootcamp that was written in Java. I’ve written another blog post about that entirely, but in sum, it was a horrendous waste of time and money. Then I used CodeAcademy, Lynda.com, any Girl Develop It or Women Who Code workshop I could find. I started to improve, and retain what I was learning. My social life dwindled as I immersed myself in code, and worked whatever temp jobs or summer work I could get.

Then I applied to bootcamps, which was it’s own process: The application, code challenge, and multiple interviews. The most arduous part was trying to suss out which of these schools were toxic money making schemes that allowed anyone through the door regardless of skill. That won’t work for me. Because if one person…