It’s been a long time writing here, but Happy New Year, everyone!
I’ve been looking through this blog and noticed how much I lacked so much updates and content that should serve its prior purpose. Because I’ve set up my new goals for 2019, I have decided to declutter this site ala KonMari style and then rebuild a few of my other existing sites and move some of the previous features from here to those other sites. For instance, my supposed zen art gallery.
I decided to transfer The NINPOJineous into a straight-up progress blog regarding my coding journeys, but I’m still going to add some tutorials if I can on some of the things I’ve learned, such as WordPress and other things. Therefore, I’ve minimized the site a little bit, both content and design-wise. Eventually, I’ll be rebuilding a brand-new theme for this blog.
And now, the challenges…
#100DaysOfCode & #21DayCKChallenge
After my failures and sacrifices from my last update, I decided to slow down a bit and revamp myself at the end of 2018. There were a lot of life events that occurred, such as a car accident that cost me my 10+-yr-old car and my brother’s son being born and I’ve gone googoo-gaga on the little guy, that I took a break from my coding and bootcamp journey.
Luckily, I still got a support group Career Karma to help me get up on my feet again. They recently built a mobile app for both Android and iOS, replacing the Telegram messaging app where we’re shuffled to be part of a few peer circles who are going through the same path. Starting 2019, Career Karma also began launching a habit-forming challenge called the #21DayCKChallenge. It wasn’t just a hashtag that you can use on Twitter, but there’s also a process behind it. It’s still brand-new so things are experimental at the moment, but I look forward to bringing me the motivation to reach the end of my journey.
In turn, I decided to start over with #100DaysOfCode, even though I already began my Round 2 of the challenge. The only reason why I decided to start over so that I can coincide with the #21DayCKChallenge and easily keep track of my journey, like killing two birds with one stone. It’s a lot easier to post updates with both hashtags also.
The plans and sources I have chosen are the following:
- App Academy Open
- FreeCodeCamp
- Some courses from Udemy
I also have some supplemental learning aids apart from the list above:
And a few options that I’m considering, of course:
- Skillcrush
- Some bootcamp prep courses offered by Lambda School and Flatiron School and others.
In some ways, I’m already “part” of a bootcamp, since App Academy is a bootcamp and FreeCodeCamp has their lessons and methods in an interactive bootcamp style, somewhat. However, App Academy launched their latest App Academy Open, in which they opened their bootcamp curriculum to everyone for free. They have plans that you can subscribe too, such as paying for a mentor to help you or you can attend one of their full-time immersion courses through ISAs (income sharing agreements) where you don’t pay the bootcamp until you get a job earning at least over $50K.
I’ve failed to be admitted to Lambda School. I couldn’t afford Flatiron School. I couldn’t even finish the meeting with Thinkful because I got into a car accident on that day and would have to give up in order to recover.
So for now, taking the App Academy Open curriculum is the safest way for the time being until I sort myself together.
Current Progress
App Academy’s Intro to Programming course introduces us to Ruby, a general purpose language that’s easy to learn. In fact, I have taken a basic Ruby class through Skillcrush before, but I wasn’t able to progress through it because life happened. So in some ways, it’s a bit of a refresher for me, but I have forgotten some of the super basics already, so it’s a good way to keep in touch again.
In addition, Prograte has both Ruby and Ruby on Rails courses, so I’ll be checking out of them as well.
That’s all for my update for the day. It’s almost 2:00 am here, so I’m signing off.