My programming skills have greatly improved in the sense where I am becoming more familiar with how things work and how to structure the commands to work properly. I am becoming more confident in using loops, strings, arrays, and objects. However, I am still working on improving my skills. My fundamental understanding was extremely unstable at the beginning of the semester.
I still have much to work on to improve my programming skills. I need to keep practicing the tasks and work on understaning placement. I still need more practice on the server.js page. Sometimes I feel confident, and I think I am getting it. However, when my page stops working or does not work properly, I become discouraged and reluctant to try different things because I had already spent 12 hours trying to figure it out.
I have learned a lot from doing WODs and I can do them without copying the screencast. I did, however, find the screencast to be an extremely helpful tool. While some might preceive the screen casts to be a crutch, I found it to be an excellent learning tool and confidence builder. It provided clarity and real world examples on how to use the concepts learned in the lecture. Though the answer was provided in most cases, going through the motion of repeating the tasks multiple times while recording allowed me to retain the concepts.
The labs have helped my learning progression and I am able to complete them with confidence. It was helpful to go through the labs in class with the professor because it connects some of the concepts in the leccture to the actions in the code. It would be helpful to go over all the tasks in the labs and receiving more examples with further explanation. Perhaps some more concise tasks or mini repetitive activities on each of the subjects. I understand that at times we must be resourceful in finding the answer, but it can be discouraging to spend a lot of time trying to figure out the answer by researching on our own.
I learned a lot from my experience doing Assignment 1 and feel ready to work on Assignment 2. I realized that I had the wrong approach when starting Assignment 1. I had to start a new repo three times. I believe my initial challenge was what I had in mind for the project did not align with my level of capabilities in executing them. Sometimes simplicity is a better route to take. Learning basic programming for the first time was difficult because I spent a lot of time guessing. If I had a better foundation, I think I would have had more confidence in thinking about how to strategically attach each tasks and it would not have taken so much of my time.
There were a number of things that helped in class. The WODs were a good booster because you had to repeat the same tasks over and over to hit your speed target. The concepts suck and built confidence due to the repetitiveness. Screencasts were also extremely helpful where the student can re-watch a concept that they didn’t quite understand the first time in class. One on one help was also extremely helpful when I was stuck in a place that I could not get out. It was also great working with classmates. Discord is a supportive forum for collaboration with classmates who have the same issues or some that can offer help.