Week 7: I'm noticing a pattern here...

Week 7

We're finishing up week 7 of Iron Yard.
We've crossed a bridge into the land of "Hey, you should start to see how this all is beginning to make sense"
...and -what the hell?!- it kinda IS.

Granted, there are still moments of "Wait...what the hell do I do now?..." but they're becoming less and less frequent, and I'm beginning to learn the patterns of where to go and what to look for. Both in my own review of 'what did I just do' and 'where would I find that answer...'

In class we're creating and utilizing what we've covered in weeks past with JavaScript and Ajax to get our user-driven websites to reload with the proper information without a full-page refresh. The prompt is to build something similar to giphy.com. This is a bit more the UI stuff I'm eager to learn. I know I'm in a course for back-end, but there are times I want to break out my design-minded side to have a bit of creativity in my work. I just keep reminding myself that I'm building skeletons for now. I can flesh them out later, but I need the structural components to work first. Everyone wants a cute kitten...but one without bones is sick and disgusting.

...I was thinking more of a meowing puddle of fur...

I'll also be building a task-managing web app over the Thanksgiving holiday. I'm hoping to get up to par with these rails app skills before we move into utilizing APIs for our applications. 

On Patterns

Humans love patterns. Fact. We do.
As I'm learning, nearly everything in life is a series of patterns. From the clothes on your back, to the pavement you walk on, to the food you eat. There's a pattern in all of it. There's even a word for behavioral patterns: habit.

Coding is nothing more than taking a look into the patterns of text needed to generate the information you want. Like languages. It may sound incredibly simple...but I had this odd 'Sudden Clarity Clarence' moment where it hit me: literally everything is a pattern. The key is just figuring out the pattern and then learning to manipulate it to what you want the outcome to be.

...dude...

The big(ger) patterns I've learned through this course so far:
My personal learning patterns
Basic patterns to coding
Logical problem solving patterns

And these patterns are applicable for SO much. My future in the developer world, for any major (or minor) problem that I'm thinking through, and learning, really, anything in my future endeavors.

I can recall in my second year studio for landscape architecture, Devin, a friend of mine, was hell-bent on 'breaking the mold'. He wanted so badly to go against the grain of design, as I think all young designers want - to truly design something so unique that it changes the way we think about design for the future. You want something balanced? Here's an asymmetrical design that meshes nothing together! Take that!
Devin has one of the most creative minds of my friends. But I'll combat the 2nd-year-studio version of him for a moment to say: in many (even most) cases, taking the road most travelled - is the best course for learning.

"Damnit, Steve. We didn't build that road for no f#ckin' reason."

The important corollary with this, however, is taking the next step: breaking down the patterns of what has been done into components to a point where they seem almost useless, then building them up to what your vision originally was. Many times we forget to do this. We're so caught up in the vision of what we want the end product to look like, or how we want it to function, we forget to break it down, find the patterns, and build it back up.

As I work through the coming weeks, I'll be doing as I've had to do this past week - remind myself to break it down, look at the patterns and learn what works with what, then build it back up to where I want it to go.

On a personal note:

This course is effecting my life in so many way. For the positive, I should add - boy that statement could sound bad, couldn't it? I've had to (re)learn so many basics about learning and myself on topics that I felt I had answers to already. This course has already been a bit life-changing for me. I genuinely wish I had these kinds of lessons in my college experience (or even earlier) - but I also doubt I would have understood the gravity of it had I gone through this any younger. Regardless, after the struggles of this week, I'm left with a feeling that I'm on the right path to learning how to be the person I want to be, for me. It's nothing more than understanding the patterns needed to get there. ...a Konami Code for real life.

Let's go kick some ass.

(Photo of enthusiasm/determination level below)

Week 6 Recap

Week 6: Completed

I've completed half the Iron Yard course. ...wait. What?

What does this mean? How do I feel? 

Well, if you would have asked me how I felt mid-week, I might have said 'still lost'. ...Now, I'd probably say 'still lost. ...but I'm getting there!'

This past week, I had multiple chats with Chris about how I felt as though I was just not getting something. It was like there was a piece that I was completely omitting in my mind to link a lot of these concepts together. Chris assured me I knew more than I thought I did. I was not so sure.

We were paired up for a project this past week, to build a version of Twitter. I was paired with a young lady in our class (let's call her 'Lauren'). Lauren and I had learned already that we do not communicate the same way. At various points in the course already, we had attempted to ask each other questions for assistance in assignments, only to find we could not convey the concept to the other, but we always ended up finding out own solutions through the process of trying to get the other person to see what we were talking about.
Chris was glad he paired us together when he found this out.

But through having to communicate with someone who sees things differently, we both found we do, in fact, know more than we think. I had a serious "ah HA!" moment while explaining something, as I realized not only was what I was saying making sense to me, I was also solving a road-block error we had come across. It was one of those moments where everything 'clicked'. The feeling you get when you've been pushing and pushing to understand what the heck is going on, then getting that "eureka" moment is a little rush, a small high, and a driving factor to the work we're doing. (Because I already feel like I'm learning to become a wizard, but when this wizardry makes sense it. is. awesome.)

What a corny reference.

Course Timeclock

This past week:

Iron Yard - 52 hours

HopCat - 27 hours

Coursework

As previously mentioned, we're currently working on building a twitter clone. The version Lauren and I are working on has been affectionately dubbed "Rage Rant" - the place you can vent your frustration in 170 characters or less. 

The end of the week was crunching out as much on this as possible, as I knew my weekend would consist of pretty much nothing but time at HopCat.

Learning through ineptitude 

The feeling of being lost is something I'm beginning to accept. (Emphasis on 'beginning to'...) But Chris explained the philosophy behind the course structure - the method behind the madness, if you will.

Imagine there is a circle that represents everything you know, you know that you know, and you're comfortable with. The area outside this circle is varying degrees of things you don't know, ranging from "hey this is kinda new" to "What. the. fuck. is this shit?!" - depending on how far you wander out from that circle of knowledge. The course is designed to take place, almost exclusively, in that zone of varying bewilderment.

The effect: I'm learning, but in a completely different way than what I've become accustomed to through my schooling. This process is causing me to live in a learn-to-survive style that, while a bit frustrating, is rewarding me with a rapid amount of growth, and moments where things which seem completely Greek suddenly 'click'.  This process is one that I hope and feel I will continue with moving forward - in this course, in my own educational pursuits, and in life.

In completing week 6, I feel empowered. I feel driven. And I'm fueled for more.

Let's do this.