Is dev school right for you? A day in the life of two students

Dev school isn’t for everyone, but there is no denying its increasing popularity and importance in today’s job market. We asked two students, one an experienced coder and the other a newcomer, to break down a normal day at coding bootcamp. The first, Travis, recently moved to LA from Oakland and is enrolled at Codesmith in Playa Vista. He walked us through his typical schedule before his program’s project period begins. The second, Ellen, is a newcomer to the coding world and began her classes at Sabio.la last week. She explained how she manages to balance her intense class schedule while raising her two daughters:

Generally I wake up at 6:30 a.m. and hit the snooze bar. Around 6:40 I get out of bed and go to the gym for about 30-45 minutes. I come back upstairs, make breakfast, and I’m out the door by 8:30 a.m. so I can get to Codesmith around 8:50. I grab some coffee and chat with people and at 9:00 a.m. we have something called daily notices. They are really, really strict about you being on time to daily notices. It's a brief run down of the schedule and then right after that we jump into the solutions for Hack Hour. 

 

One of our EIRs, Jasmine, is really good at doing the Hack Hour solutions and she works us through one approach and people ask questions. It's more of a give and take so she’ll want to hear about our solutions too. Somebody will go up and talk about their approach as more of a pseudocode, meaning that we don’t necessarily care about the syntax, we all know how to code here, so they just walk us through basically what they're doing. We then talk about the approach and if someone felt like they were close they might want to talk it out but otherwise it's pretty fast. 

 

Within 20 minutes we move on to that day’s Hack Hour. Everybody works on Hack Hour for about 40 minutes until about 10 a.m. Typically we have 2 day modules— on the first day we’ll have a 20 minute lecture that introduces a new topic and helps you understand the purpose of it. So maybe we’re talking about React or something like that, — for me React is really hard because it's the first front-end framework that I've ever done. But after the lecture, you get partnered up and you do what’s called a skill builder which is a basic introduction. For example, if we were doing data structures, you’d have to do all these problems using data structures like using a link list to create a shopping list. 

 

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After you're done with the skill builder, which is about two hours, you go to lunch and come back for another lecture. After lunch on the first day, you’ll jump into the challenge and that will go until the end of the module the next day. 

 

Right after lunch on the second day of the module they’ll do an approach lecture during which the instructor will show us his code, walk us through how he approached it, and show us his product. That’s really helpful because then you have the rest of the day to figure out your own project with the instructor’s roadmap. They’re really good about allowing you to struggle the right amount and then showing you the light- — but they still will never just give you the answers, which can be frustrating at first but creates a better learning experience. 

 

All of this is done with pair programming in which there there are strict driver and navigator roles. The navigator can’t touch the keyboard and the driver doesn’t really have as much input on where they’re going. It really accelerates the learning process for me because you really have to articulate well to the driver what you want to do. If you’re the driver, you’ll be thinking something isn’t going to work, but then more often than not you realize there is more than one way to code something. So from lunch until 5:30 you’ll be working on it, break for dinner, and then you work on it some more. The day typically ends around 8 p.m., but some people stay until 9 or 10 p.m. The next day you wake up and do it all over again.

My morning starts early. I typically wake up around 5:40am. I make tea and then head off to either go to a spin class or take a 2–3 mile walk around the neighborhood. Since I sit much of the day I need to get my exercise in when I can in the mornings and at lunch. This morning I walked down the canyon to the beach. I love the silence of the early morning, broken only by the birds tweeting, the sound of the waves crashing, and the squirrels skittering about. 

 

When I got back from my walk I showered and ate breakfast with my 17 year old daughter. Breakfast or dinner is the only time I have now to check in with my kids as I am gone 12 hours a day and they are working or out with friends. This morning I dropped my 17 year old off at school at 7:45 to register for her senior year then made my way to Culver City. I like to get to Sabio.la before 8:30 a.m. since my brain works best early in the day.  

 

In the 1.5 hours before Gregorio gets in I work on my code and get help from folks in my cohort of 10. David, aka Wayne, is in very early and is very experienced in addition to being a natural teacher so he is typically my ‘go to’ guy for help, particularly in the mornings. This morning I needed help with one of my stored procedures.

 

We start the morning off with check in where we stand in a circle outside and go around to say what we did since last check in and what blocks we are encountering. Then we go back to coding. After about an hour or so we get a tutorial on a specific subject that we will need to address. This morning it was about moving our AJAX code to a separate file to make future changes easier. We record the sessions so we can play them back later.

 

I counterbalance the Millennials that are 80% of my cohort, as I am almost 60 and have two daughters, who are 5 – 10 years younger than most my cohort colleagues. My background is in banking, finance, philanthropy, and various entrepreneurial ventures, the last of which was as CEO/COO of a mobile health startup, Social Rhythm. Although I am not a tech native like this generation, I remind myself that my work and life experience is just as valuable as knowing how to write amazing code. The first week (which was last week) I felt incredibly overwhelmed and frustrated. My brain could not wrap itself around all the different coding languages and how the entire system works. I have learned to breathe through these minor panic attacks and trust what Gregorio told us the first day – if we put in the time (70 hours/week), have a confident attitude, and do the work we will get it over time.  This is very much like moving to a foreign country with foreign customs and systems and different languages and dialects. We will be fully immersed in this new world for the next 12 weeks and will come out understanding the languages/dialects and customs/systems.

 

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We take an hour for lunch. I brought my lunch and ate while I reviewed and updated my Trello cards. I like to document every step we take so that I can refer back to it next time through. I am working with colleagues to diagram and write up the processes. Since I learn best visually I like diagrams and step-by-step instructions. I then went for a 30 minute walk to clear my head.

 

This afternoon I worked on my code and got help from Gregorio and Wayne. I get so excited when I get something to work right. I feel like a little kid. I am so proud of myself. Intermittently throughout the day subdued cheers will erupt from around the room as people get something to work. The atmosphere this week is more upbeat as we make progress through our project and get more experienced writing the code and getting the front end, server, and back end all working together.

 

We usually have at least one tutorial in the afternoon. This afternoon we learned how to check in our code and all the procedures around that important process. I was one of the two people to check my code in as part of the tutorial. It is always helpful to me to do things as we talk about them to develop the muscle memory.

 

I left around 6:30 p.m. tired and hungry. When I get home I am too beat to do more than fix a simple dinner. Tonight I sat out on my deck to enjoy the silence and solitude. I sometimes get a second wind and can work on my code. Tonight I was fried so I watched the video of the morning’s session. I got to bed at 9:30, read for 30 minutes then went to sleep. I have to make sure I get enough sleep, which for me is at least 8 hours, in order for my brain to incorporate all that I learned throughout the day. I can tell I am processing it at night because I have dreams about coding.

 

If I can do this, anyone can if they have the will and a great bootcamp like Sabio.la to provide the way.