My first CDT course

I have finally wrapped up my first cohort as a tutor/mentor for Code the Dream's intro-to-programming course that introduced the basics of JavaScript, HTML, and CSS to students from non-traditional backgrounds. Overall, I enjoyed the experience and I even learned some new things about XML and AJAX. If I could go back and redo my introduction to computer programming, I would probably forego the coding bootcamp route and choose Code The Dream because I feel like it provides a more structured, thoughtful, and organized education than what I received in my bootcamp.

Perhaps the most challenging part of the whole experience was an issue that I think many educators are facing this year and that is the new technological breakthrough of AI. Now I think AI has a lot of great applications, I even have my own little app on this website using the ChatGPT 4.0 API, and I'm not going to pretend that I don't use it when I'm stumped on some code and don't feel like subjecting myself to the Stack Overflow forums-- but when I observe a student struggling in the first few weeks of assignments trying to write functions (and I'm not saying it's easy) and then suddenly have no more questions and all of the code they turn is perfect with organized and clean code then it's obvious to me they have a complete dependence on AI to do their work. I noted these observations internally but I'm not about to go open up that can of worms in this program. At some point, these students will be tasked with coding challenges they must perform live in front of someone else, and they won't be able to use AI-- so they are only really wasting their time and cheating themselves.

After my final review, I was pleasantly surprised to find that I had been receiving all positive feedback from my tutoring sessions. I wasn't aware this had been ongoing throughout the cohort but it made the experience all that much more rewarding at the end. Here are some of my favorite comments that I received.

What's taken so long?

So last year after completing my bootcamp-- financial pressure forced me to return to my previous position as treatment coordinator for a busy dental office in downtown San Francisco. It is a fast-paced and highly-stressful job-- but I have a lot of experience doing it so at least my skills are in high-demand in that industry and my track record has been good enough that my old employer actually reached out to me first about returning to my previous position.

After returning full-time in August, I continued coding on nights and weekends-- pretty obsessively as a matter of fact. I kept working on coding challenges here and there but there were also days where I'd get home and was too wiped out to do anything but sleep-- sometimes without even eating dinner. But I kept pushing myself to learn more and more. I had a plan to use my accrued PTO that was still left on my payroll account, from before I had left to do the bootcamp, to take a Friday off every couple of weeks so I could focus on coding and applying. Unfortunately, I never got to follow through with that plan.

The Thursday before Thanksgiving, I was nearing the end of another busy day at the office. I was looking forward to a 3-day weekend as I had scheduled to take the following day off to focus on coding at home. As soon as my last coworker left the office to go home and I had clocked out-- my phone rang with the familiar area code from my hometown in Mobile, AL. I didn't think much of it at first because I get spam calls all the time from that same area code. However, about 20 seconds later-- my phone rings again from the same number and it was kind of late for spam callers so I picked it up. It was my mom's neighbor-- I didn't even know she had my number and she's never called me before so I was already alarmed. I asked if she was okay and I was told that they hadn't seen my mom all week-- her garbage wasn't taken out that day and her other neighbor became concerned and called the police to do a wellness check. They asked if I knew of a key to get in the house; I haven't lived there in years and as far as I knew my mom didn't hide any spare keys. I told them to do whatever it takes to get into the house. After getting off the phone with her neighbor, I began making calls starting with my brothers, and then my uncle in Louisiana. Unfortunately, he lives 2 states away but is the closest family member to her. I was able to get the number of my mom's best friend Terry and gave her the bad news of what was happening at our house. Needless to say, I was really scared and I don't think I'll ever forget that feeling of dread as I started to anticipate the worst. I wanted Terry to be there-- because if I had to hear the worst news then I at least wanted to hear it from her.

After about 30 dreadful minutes, Terry called me back and said that the police had waited for the fire department to break down my mom's backdoor. To everyone's shock, my mom was still alive and somewhat respsonsive! It seems that she had been lying on her bedroom floor for several days after suffering from a stroke. I broke down and was just so thankful that she was still alive. Since this moment however, life hasn't been the same for her or my family. I bought a ticket and arrived there a couple of days later and stayed with her for 2 weeks. My mom's entire left side was paralyized, she started experiencing severe delusions and symptoms of dementia, and she was physically covered in rashes that caused severe itching for her at night. Unfortunately, as it also happened right before the holiday, there weren't any good doctors on staff at the hospital. It was hell. After a really bad experience with her doctor where they attempted to discharge her early-- I was able to file an appeal that delayed things just long enough to get her into an acceptable skilled-nursing facility (I want to mention that the original skilled-nursing facility that her case manager recommended to choose had declined her but we didn't find out for a week-- then upon being informed of her being declined I was forced to choose another skilled-nursing facility with a deadline of 3 hours). The facility I got her into was better than her hospital and at least she had her own private room but it still pained me that I would be flying back to California the next day. I ended up using all of my PTO to be with her while she recovered in the hospital and over the next few months I've flew back home to check on her and ultimately cleaned out her house in preparation for it to be sold to pay for her medical treatment-- as is typical of the American Healthcare System.

On a positive note, my mom has made a lot of progress in her recovery and can now use her left side. She's taken a few steps and is currently learning to use a walker. My uncle took her out of the skilled-nursing facility and moved her to a similar facility in Louisiana where she is closer to family who can check on her. I resumed my coding in January and have dilligently completed an entire Udemy course learning Java as my base Object-Oriented langauge where I've also made some apps like a banking simulator where a user has a savings and checking account with a rewards program and everyone's favorite--- savings withdraw fees! From there I completed another long course in learning PHP where I learned another way to setup Registration and Login using tables in mySQL. Then in the last couple of months, I had a breakthrough on one of my capstone projects getting the login component to work using sessions, which I credit from taking a week off of work after catching COVID while traveling from visiting my mom.

So I can't really do justice how hard this has been on me and my family. This has been the most challenging experience of my life but I'm trying to rise to the occasion and keep working towards my goal. It would be such a huge blessing to get a job where I could work from home so I could spend more time with my mom while she continues to recover. I'm in the middle of redoing this website and I also recently began volunteering as a mentor for Code the Dream to help disenfranchised communities learn to code. If you're reading this, I just want to say thank you for your support.

MyBikeDatabase personal MVP has been reached


After so long, I have finally implemented a working Login component that uses JSON web tokens and authentication headers for my capstone project. I have also updated the index page to only display objects (created bikes) that users have created. So when a user registers and logs into their account- they can view, create, edit, and delete their own objects. That's the true MVP for MyBikeDatabase when I first imagined it.

It took me a long time to get here for quite a few reasons- one being the difficulty in that I am still learning as I go as a developer and the login stuff was barely touched upon during my bootcamp. Last year I got the core registration component setup where I could post hashed userdata to the database, storing it as an object, so I knew in principal how the Login component would work in fetching that data to check if it matches with what is submitted in a login form that users fill out-- but there's still so much more to it than that when it comes to sessions, and JSON web token middleware, error handlers, and authentication. It also took me a long time to get to this point due to having to return to work full-time just a few months after my bootcamp ended and a couple of months after that I had to put everything on hold to manage a serious family emergency back home that I am continuing to deal with today.

My ultimate goal for myBikeDatabase has been achieved and I am happy I can now finally demo it for people who want to use it. I still have a little more work to do with the styling and adding a few more things-- like an email for the user model and registration component but this is a giant step for me as a developer. If you're reading this, thanks for your support!

Post-bootcamp update


I've been getting a decent amount of interviews lately! There was almost one for every single day this week except yesterday. I was actually supposed to have one today as well with a Google recruiter but they had to cancel which was actually OK with me because I'm not ready for the Google process.

Thanks to connecting with my peers at GA, I remembered the site for myGA where there were still so many lessons yet to learn including huge concepts like Big O Notation and Recursion (among sorting algorithms, search algorithms, ect.) This is the info I need injected into my brain as finances are dictating that my job search conclude sooner than later. While I want to code, I need a lot more practice taking coding challenges.

I just finished the biggest section for JS DataStructures and Algorithms on FreeCodeCamp.org! I start the ES6 section already and did a few. The certification doesn't come easy!

A friend who has been mentoring me since I started coding just sent me this book `Cracking the Coding Interview`. I think this is just what I need although the book is soooo dense! I worked hard today learning recursion and tomorrow I will have an interview that tests my frontend ability for a full-stack position. I hope I hear back from the JavaScript security company I interviewed with earlier this week. That has been my best hope so far although I'm trying not to get my hopes up. It's already been a few days since I took my coding challenge test and send the COO a thank you note. Whatever happens, happens.

Hello World


So I've decided to create a blog page on my website even though the idea seems so corny. But I think it's a good idea because it will help me stay engaged with my website, updating my github, and my ultimate goal--- employment as a coder.

Some ideas I already for this blog include replacing this hardcoded blog post with a form on the page that will let me just post a string from there. That should be a fun project. I'm interested in making a game as well-- just for fun of course. While perusing my github today I ran across some of my earliest projects in Javascript, a terminal-based "choose your own adventure" game. I think if you can make a compelling text-based game, it might be even more fun with some graphics! It's just a thought though.

This is embarrassing but it gave me the inspiration to start this blog in the first place, I just realized about an hour ago that I left off something very important on my resume (which I've already sent to hundreds and hundreds of people)-- and that would be my academic awards. Maybe I took them off in the first place because I was told that they're not going to be important to the employer and just take up space. Even if that's true, and I'm honestly skeptical about that, those awards are important to me and I want them on there. I worked hard for them and how else am I going to standout from the crowd?

I started going through the Javascript Certification on FreeCodeCamp.org a couple of days ago and I'm kind of hooked! It's been totally the opposite of my Leetcode experience. I'm at 43% right now and hope to maybe have it completed by the end of the day on Monday. In the meantime, I'm taking notes from a Java course I'm taking on Udemy, and I'm looking to start contributing to some open-source projects on github!