Greetings!
Jesse here, and I am one month into my learning to code journey. It’s been both exhilarating and frustrating. Looking back at the curriculum and seeing how much I’ve learned brings me pride and joy, also flashbacks and mild PTSD…
All jokes aside, the first module of the curriculum- Procedural Ruby was an excellent intro. The way the labs were and continue to be structured; hold your hand through the first steps before removing the training wheels and letting you, the student, discover, run free with curiosity. Procedural Ruby implied getting familiar with the syntax and the overall structure of Ruby. Turns out there are many ways to complete the same task, this I struggled with.
The deeper I was pulled into the vortex of the web in search of methods to use or clues on solving errors, the wider my understanding grew on the creative freedom coding gives the programmer. I would find multiple methods that had the same function. Or different approaches to create problem- solving logic. Where I struggled with in particular, given my mind’s half -to -non existent RAM (memory), was memorizing the return values of methods. Turns out return value is a pretty big deal when it comes to programming. Each method has a return value, some as arrays, others without, some even with no alterations, despite me presumably making changes to them.
Now, every-time I know I will be doing iterations, I immediately start a secondary tab and research different methods and their return values. After much repetition, things start to stick.
To program is to fully embrace not knowing everything, yet understanding that a solution does exist somewhere.