HI! I’m glad you decided to join us again. Super quick recap: I decided to start documenting my weekly experience with General Assembly in hopes I can help decide if a coding bootcamp is right for you. Let’s get into it!

Checkpoint 01

9am - 10am: Our first quiz. Every week, we have a mini quiz to review the previous week. You must turn in your work no later than 10am.

At General Assembly, there isn’t a grading system. You’re free to ask questions and the instructors will provide feedback. The checkpoint is mostly for you to get a feel of your understanding of the material.

Day 1 && 2: Javascript and DOM with jQuery

How I felt the entire second week

Javascript Objects and Functions: 2.5 hours:

Javascript, our first programming language to tackle! Woohoo! We tackled topics such as:

• If, Else If statements
• Loops
• Functions
• Methods
• Hoisting
• Objects

DOM with jQuery: 2.5 hours:

Next, we went over The Document Object Model (DOM). The DOM provides a structured representation of the [HTML] document. The nodes of every document are organized in a tree structure, called the DOM tree. It’s a bit abstract but here’s a visual representation:

The DOM ... dun, dun dun!

In order to interact with The DOM, we used jQuery, a Javascript library. A game changer. jQuery is fast, it’s light, and it’s simple. It became instantly more fun to use than vanilla Javascript.

At the end of the day, we were assigned two homework assignments, remember homework is always due on Thursday no later than 9am.

Confidence level (1-5): 5 Optimistic level: High

Day 3: Javascript Events, Callbacks & Lab

First thing in the morning - Review / Code Challenge. The day starts at 9am and the floor is open for students to ask questions on pretty much anything.

After the questions have been answered, we are given a mini code challenge to kick off the day. Code challenges do not get turned in.

Javascript Events/Callbacks: 1.5 hours

During this lesson, we reviewed:

• Selecting elements in jQuery vs. vanilla Javascript
• $(this) vs this
• Synchronous and Asynchronous Program Execution
• Lots and lots of in class practicing

Scope and Context: 1.5 hours

During this lesson, we reviewed:

• Context in regards to where functions are invoked
• Scope in regards to where a variable can be referenced/used
  • Global scope and local scope
• More in class practicing

Having a grasp on Scope within your code is key to becoming a great developer who writes clean code. This lesson felt more conceptual than previous ones but all was well.

Confidence level (1-5): 5 Optimistic level: High

Day 4 && 5: Lab - Building an ATM

The lab was assigned to us Thursday at 2:30pm and due on Friday at 2:30pm. For our first lab, we were given a lot of time to complete. However, upcoming labs will be assigned and due the same day.

The assignment: Building an application to track checking and savings account balances. Here are the requirements:

• Users can deposit money into one of the bank accounts
• Users can withdraw money from one of the bank accounts
  • Make sure the balance in an account can’t go negative. If a user tries to withdraw more money than exists in the account, ignore the transaction.
• The color of a bank account should reflect its balance.

I had a lot of fun building the ATM. Feeling especially proud of my event listeners on the buttons and getting the deposit and withdraw functionality working. Today was a good day.

Screenshot of my ATM Lab Submission

Confidence level (1-5): 5 Optimistic level: High

Next week is PROJECT 01 WEEK! Get hype! Okay, until next time - chat soon!