Written by Marco Rosenbaum

2024-08-10

My First Major Learnings After the Coding Bootcamp

After completing my coding bootcamp, I faced a new challenge: learning to work independently. Without a mentor or trainer to guide me, I had to organize myself and find solutions on my own. Initially, I was highly motivated, which was a good start. But I quickly encountered an issue I hadn’t faced during the bootcamp: my code wasn’t working as expected, and there was no live session where I could ask for help.
Suddenly, I found myself spending hours searching through forums or asking ChatGPT for advice. It was frustrating and time-consuming. There were nights when I went to bed angry, only to wake up the next morning and fix the bug—a simple typo—in just 10 minutes. I would often wonder: “What was I doing last night?” I think many of us can relate to this experience.
After this happened a few times, I decided to invest in GitHub Copilot. That was probably the best decision I could have made at that point. It saved me a lot of time by helping me catch simple bugs in my code. At that stage, I wasn’t very confident in my coding skills, and spending several hours each week debugging was draining. It’s hard to stay motivated when you feel like you’re making little progress.
While GitHub Copilot helped with simple bugs and auto-completion saved time, it didn’t solve all my issues. I quickly realized that even with tools and advice from forums, I sometimes spent hours on problems that weren’t all that difficult. This recurring frustration led me to rethink how I was organizing myself.
I knew I needed a better approach. So, I decided to break my projects down into smaller, more manageable tasks. This is something we’re all told to do, but in the early stages of learning, it’s easy to get so wrapped up in coding and wanting to make quick progress that you forget the importance of proper organization, taking breaks, and ultimately being more effective in the long run.
I started by categorizing tasks as either easy or difficult. Whenever I found myself stuck on a particular issue and starting to feel frustrated, I would set a 15-minute timer. That became my deadline for working on that problem. When the timer ended, I would take a short break and then switch to an easier task.
This approach was a game-changer. I no longer wasted too much time on a single issue and regained my motivation by solving smaller problems and experiencing those little victories. Most of the time, after completing a smaller task and returning to the original issue, I found that I could solve it with a clearer mind.

Through this process, I learned the importance of finding a task management approach that works best for you. Now, I’m constantly working on reorganizing myself to be as efficient as possible.