Heard the new Drake Album?
What do you think about the B-side? Which song was your least favorite?
For me, the track ‘After Dark’ where he collabs with Ty and late Major is a serious contender for my favorite on B Side. That record was sooo smooth right from the very first second.
I didn’t start this article to talk about Aubrey, though.
I was just listening to Scorpion again for the billionth time, and while the track ‘After Dark’ was playing, I thought it’d be an awesome title to a rant detailing my travails since I went silent after publishing (an deleting) a post over two months ago and my plans moving forward.
So, here goes…
in Static Major’s voice ‘after dark’
Since publishing that piece and cowardly ‘going dark’, here are a few things that have transpired:
The Past
First, and most important to point out, I didn’t finish up any of the courses I stated I would in the original article. Then I …
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got started on the Andela Cycle 32 bootcamp project (built a basic frontend with HTML and CSS, started building the backend with Node wherein I used ExpressJS to create a basic CRUD RESTful API which I wrote tests for using Mocha + Chai, and implemented code coverage - coveralls - and continuous integration - Travis) but couldn’t finish up because I …
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foolishly + stupidly (foolspidly? stuplishy?) almost got myself blacklisted from Andela (a story for another day, hopefully).
After I was let go from the bootcamp, I focused on the Google challenge scholarship (AKA ALC 3.0) which was done in collaboration with Udacity where I ‘relearnt’ HTML, CSS, Basic JS and DOM manipulation with jQuery, met a couple of awesome folks in the vibrant community and won a T-shirt playing Kahoot at our final meet-up.
I also …
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built a ‘single page application’ as part of the ALC program which I hosted on Github and is live here.
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failed to make it into phase 2 of the program where successful scholars were awarded fully-paid Nano-degree scholarships on either of Frontend Web Development or Mobile Web Specialist tracks (for the ‘web guys’).
I, alongside doing all of the above, started solving Algorithm challenges on Codewars and moved my rank up to 6kyu.
That’s that on what happened in the past few weeks on my quest to become ‘world class’. Now, on to what I’m doing now, and what I hope to be doing over the next few weeks.
The Present
Currently, I am watching the finals of the Fifa 2018 World Cup 😜
Ok, more seriously, I, today, rounded up creating an updated personal study curriculum which I look to utilize in brushing up my software development skills before heading to the Andela Bootcamp again. Here’s what this curriculum looks like:
As seen from the shot above, I have already completed some courses/tasks in the curriculum. This is because prior to abandoning it back in March to focus on the Andela Homestudy Curriculum, I had been following one of P1xt’s ‘Job Ready’ guides which took this form:
However, after going through the bootcamp, seeing what is entailed and would be needed to make it through, I made what I think would be the appropriate curriculum (for me) to level up. YOYOL (You Own Your Own Learning), according to Andelans, after all.
Here’s a breakdown of how I think this new personalized curriculum would help me in reaching my goal.
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Wes Bos' Javascript 30 - sharpen my current javascript knowledge.
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CS50 Intro to CS - get the fundamentals of computer science right
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CS50 Web programming with Python & JS - Get the fundamentals of ‘full stack’ web development right.
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Wes Bos' Learn Node - Brush up my backend Javascript knowledge.
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Shay Howe’s Advanced HTML & CSS - Basic frontend should be intact too.
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Wes Bos' “What The Flexbox?!” - don’t get caught off-guard! My frontend should be ‘flexible’.
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Wes Bos' ES6 for Everyone - stay on the cutting edge.
In addition to those courses, I plan to finish up the YDKJS series which I am already 3 books into.
So, what’s the ETA for this?
Anywhere between 350 to 400 hours, theoretically.
I plan to put in a minimum of 5 deep hours of study daily, so I’m estimating that completion of this curriculum up till the “ES6 for Everyone” course would take me a little under 3 months.
Considering the fact that I’d also like to dedicate at least a month to exclusively building projects, I’d say I’m looking at 4 months in total.
Ok, I’ve talked about what happened in the past, and what I am currently working on. How about what I plan doing in the future?
The Future
Apart from completing the aforementioned courses and building a few personal projects over the course of the next few months, I plan to also incorporate a tidbit of technical blogging into the mix.
Published blogs can be anything, ranging from what I’m having difficulty grasping, few things I’ve grasped, personal projects I’d be working on, algorithm challenges I’d be solving and my thinking process tackling them.
In addition to that, there’s a profound practice I got exposed to during my one week at the previous bootcamp attempt - Daily Standups.
Now, I don’t think doing daily standups would be practical for me at this point, but weekly standups, weekly standups would be perfect (I think) for my accountability (it’s important, I heard).
These weekly standups, modeling the one used during the bootcamp, would take the following format …
## Since Last Standup (last 7 days)
- task 1 completed
- task 2 completed
- task 3 not completed
…
## This week (next 7 days)
- task X to be completed
- task Y to be completed
- complete task 3
…
## Blockers
- blocker 1
- blocker 2
…
… and would be published here on Medium every Sunday.
There you have it, plans ‘after dark’.
And oh, Congrats France 🇫🇷!! 🎉🎉🎉