After the Bootcamp, Episode 4

Learning is a thing that never ends.

There are new technologies coming up DAILY in web development.

Therefore...

You are always going to be finding things you don't know.

And that includes the mundane things that are boring or tedious. Or boring AND tedious. Or even worse, not "cool" enough to get you a job in the industry.

As a new developer there is a lot of pressure to do only the things that will get you hired quickly. You probably didn't go to a bootcamp because you wanted to spend a whole season locked in a room in front of a laptop staring at code. Admittedly, you could have done that at home and saved a whole bunch of money. And probably had a lot more fun too. Even if you really enjoy coding the chances are that bootcamp will test your love of coding by forcing you into uncomfortable and challenging situations.

So now that you are a bootcamp grad you want to get a job and make that investment worthwhile. And if you had to pay for it upfront you want to pay off that debt and start making that sweet sweet internet money. Fair enough. But first you have to crawl before you can learn to walk.

My goal right now is to get all of my react projects deployed to gh-pages. I built a bunch of things and I want other people to see them (not have to clone a repo, get dependencies and all the other steps). Click a button on my portfolio page and then go play that react-memory game I built. Click another button, see my chat app in action.

But this is not so straightforward and involves some work behind the scenes with npm. It isn't glamorous and its not going on my resume. But it is all part of the learning process and its exposing me to a lot of questions that also need answering. It is exhausting and it is tempting to skip in favor of easier projects that don't really push you too much.

But getting pushed is how one grows. Boats are safest in the harbor but they weren't built to stay there. So, to you fellow bootcamp grads who are getting discouraged because everything feels like a slow slog through the mud: you are absolutely correct! It IS a slow slog through the mud and it sucks! BUT it is the correct path to knowledge. So put on your boots and your hip waders and keep walking. Eventually you will get to dry land and things will be easier.

You will need a portfolio to get hired. But a shitty portfolio that doesn't work properly will do more harm than good. So put in the time to make it functional. You wouldn't write your resume in crayon so don't skip on the details here either.