Diary of a Coding Bootcamp Second Week Survivor

Week 2 is in the books.....

.....and I’m feeling surprisingly good. No major roadblocks as of yet. I know I will eventually hit a wall several times over the next 15 weeks, so I am soaking up the “wins” as much as I can right now. All week long we did a deep-dive into Python. The best part of the week was the pair programming we’ve been doing daily. I’ve been studying coding by myself for so long, it’s refreshing to have somebody to bounce ideas off of, learn from, and discuss coding. It’s nice to feel a part of a team again.

What we've been up to:

So far, we’ve developed a lot of mini-applications. All of these are terminal based. So, while they aren’t much to look at, they are requiring us to be able to think logically step by step. We have made a phonebook, a bank account interface, a small car-racing game, and a grocery shopping list interface. The grocery shopping list interface was easily the most difficult. It was a whole mess of classes, while loops, for loops, and if statements. Here's a small portion:

class ShoppingList:
    def __init__(self,title,address,groceryItems=[]):
        self.title = title
        self.address = address
        self.groceryItems = groceryItems
    def displayGroceryStore(self):
        groceryStore = [self.title, self.address]         
        for attribute in groceryStore:
            print(attribute,end=" ")
    def addItemToList(self,groceryItemName):
        self.groceryItems.append(groceryItemName)
    def displayCompleteGroceryList(self): 
        for  store in self.groceryItems:
            print(self.title)
            print(f"{store.title} : price: {store.price} quantity: {store.quantity}")

while True:
    groceryStoreName = input("What is the name of the grocery store you want to add? ")
    groceryStoreAddress = input(f"What is the address of {groceryStoreName}? ")
    groceryStoreName = ShoppingList(groceryStoreName,groceryStoreAddress)
    listOfGroceryStores.append(groceryStoreName)
    print("Here is your list of grocery stores:")
    for eachGroceryStore in listOfGroceryStores:
        eachGroceryStore.displayGroceryStore()
    userContinue = input("\n Would you like to add another grocery store to your list? If yes, press enter. If no, press 'N'. ")
    if userContinue == "N":
        break

Luckily, I had the talented Ciara Cloud as a teammate to help pull me through to the end. She has a great eye for detail and will not stop until the job is done right.

On deck:

Next week is project week. For project week, we will be developing a terminal and text based role-playing game. We will have to rely on what Python we have learned so far and any other knowledge we can gain from the google machine. We won’t have normal lectures, but we will be required to check in with our instructor first thing in the morning and last thing that evening. Other than that, we are left to our own devices. Creating something from scratch completely on my own will be a big challenge for me. The only projects I have completed on my own were code-alongs.

TECHNICAL KNOWLEDGE:

Python looping, classes, functions, and if statements.

NONTECHNICAL INSIGHT:

I realize that we are just scratching the surface of Python, but it seems fairly straight forward compared to JavaScript. When I was debating between different coding bootcamps, one of the “cons” for DigitalCrafts was the fact that we were spending the first few weeks learning Python, only to never use it again for the rest of the course. However, now that I am using it, I am glad they used this approach. It seems like it is a little bit easier to pick up the basics of computer programming learning it in Python.

Software developers are an amazingly supportive group of people. I have come across so many successful people that have encouraged me, given me advice, and shared some of their own stories and struggles.

WHAT I AM LISTENING TO:

This week it was a lot of these two albums:

What do you listen to while coding?

Week #1