Some inspirational reading/viewing for tackling the 401 course of study and getting ready to start on our careers.
How to think like a programmer
What’s the one thing I bring to this career (and a potential employer) that nobody else can?
I have military and healthcare experience, and have worked in both male and female-dominated professions. I’ve lived in small, conservative communities and large-ish liberal cities… not to mention an island with more bears than people. I not long ago lived in an apartment without an internet connection and would not have argued if somebody wanted to call me a luddite. These things make my background in tech a little uncommon, but I’m not fooling myself into thinking that I’m special. The one thing that differentiates me or any of us from everybody else is that we are the only ones with our story. We have endless resources on how to do well in an interview, but relatively few on how to be a good interviewer. I’ve been on enough interview boards to realize how unprepared most people are to conduct a good one (myself included). Folks that get the job are at times the most qualified, but they are also quite often the ones who are lucky enough to get the right questions, which allow them to showcase their stories. It will be my job to stand out from other candidates by finding a way to frame my responses to questions in a way that ensures I get to tell them everything I want them to hear. Even if my unique experiences won’t necessarily make me a better employee than a good chunk of the other qualified candidates out there, if all else is equal, interviewers need something to discern candidates from each other, and a good story might be it.
What are 3 things I’ll start doing to “un-stick” myself whenever I get stuck on tough piece of code, logic, or feature?
I’ll take the advice provided in the freecodecamp article: having already broken the problem down into sub-problems, I will next debug, reassess, and research.
I think I’ve done all the reading I can handle tonight. I may not feel like consuming any more information right now, but some day it would be useful to reflect more on ways to gameify my learning as suggested in the Super Mario Effect video.