Hey everyone!

The last couple of weeks have been crazy but I've learnt so much already and I've met some incredible people. As there was no blog post last week i have summarized the last 2 weeks below.

I've realized that CLI and GitHub are the equivalent of putting your shoes on to step out the door on the long journey that is learning to code. The real first steps are HTML & CSS. Both of these immediately give you power at your fingertips to start building your own portfolio and styling things in awesome ways, but they both bring some serious mountains to climb as a beginner.

I found the basics easy to grasp and there's loads of support out there online as well as resources such as CSS Battle, Free Code Camp etc. As you'd imagine though, a bootcamp environment requires that we progress quickly and we soon moved on, to topics such as Flexbox and Grid and that's when the wheels started to come off for me. When tackling these initially, it felt like there was no logic at all and everything I tried resulted in a different outcome to the one that i expected. After a few days though, I noticed that almost the entire cohort was running into issues on the same topics and that put my mind at ease slightly that I wasn't alone. After completely wiping my portfolio and starting from scratch many times, I have reached a level where things are starting to make sense.

The learning curve has been huge these last 2 weeks, not just in the form of new topics but also in the way i learn. I have come to terms with the fact that I'm not trying to be an expert at everything, I'm trying to nail the basics, so that I have a solid foundation to build on over the coming weeks. One of our tutors shared a great quote that sums this up really well:

"Good developers have no shame or pride - the more we know, the more we don't know"

Christmas Party

A highlight of week 4 was the Manchester Codes Christmas party which was so much fun! It was worth every mile of the 530-mile round trip it took to get there and really reminded me how amazing my cohort and all the tutors at MC are. It was also nice to remember that coding doesn't have to consume our whole lives! Each of us is a real human being with partners, pets, family, hobbies, favorite bands and it was really fun to get to know everyone in a more natural way.

As we are preparing to bring Html and CSS to a close, I am very aware that we have only scratched the surface but it feels great to be collaborating and getting stuck in. I am enjoying this brief victory before we start JavaScript.

Wish me luck!

Mike