Spring is hopefully round the corner, but this week we are looking at a different kind of Spring - the Java Framework.  It's pretty cool and can do all sorts of 'black magic!'  As usual there are lots of new terminologies to learn - ORM's (Object Relational Mappers), POJO (love this one - Plain Old Java Object)  and dependency injection to name but a few.

I mentioned black magic before, well it certainly feels at times that Spring is doing something like this!  It is such a powerful framework, for example the 7 restful routes are written in for you so you don't have to write them at all!  And instead of writing SQL queries for custom routes you write a sort of plain English derived query - both of which save a lot of time.


REFLECTIONS


I am finding myself reflecting on my journey more and more, probably because we really only have one more week of lessons left!  (then it's final project week after that!). It's hard to compare the "me" that started this journey 13 weeks ago with the "me" of today, both in terms of technical ability and confidence!  I had tried some self taught software development and really enjoyed it - which is why I decided to do the Codeclan course, but you don't really know until you are immersed in something whether you're going to enjoy it long term - or indeed be any good at it! I don't give up on things - so even if I had to struggle over the finish line I knew that I would stick the course out, but what has surprised and delighted me is how much I am loving Software Development.  I still love it after coding pretty much 24/7 for the past 13 weeks.  I still want to learn as much as I possibly can and write the best code I possibly can, AND (this is a big AND) I have discovered that I can do it!  That coupled with writing some new code and seeing it work is a huge rush - and confidence boost!

I am now looking to the future and trying to imagine what my first job will be like.  What kind of company do I want to work for?  It's exciting and terrifying in equal measures (that reminds me of how I felt when I started this course!) I think the biggest, scariest hurdle that is coming up is the technical interview (cue death march music) Why?  Because it's the unknown - I've never done one before.  So what am I doing to prepare?  As much as I possibly can! I am making notes of my notes,  I've bought a book (cracking the coding interview by Gayle Laakmann McDowell) I'm asking advice from those who have been through one and finally I have signed up to the Codewars website.  It was recommended to me by a former Codeclan Graduate (thanks Linsey Currie!) and it's great for expanding your knowledge of algorithms.  The thing I really like about it is that after you have submitted your solution you can see how other people solved it.  It's great to see all the different solutions and how differently all these minds have thought about and solved the same puzzle.  If anyone has any other recommendations on how to prepare for a technical interview please get in touch and let me know!


PORTFOLIO WEBSITE

Big fanfare please!  I have coded my first portfolio website!  Please have a look and let me know what you think (please be nice!). Seriously though, all constructive feedback is welcome.  I created this in Vue and built on what we had learned on the course adding in some functionality that we hadn't learned.  This is what I am finding really rewarding and can't thank Codeclan enough for.  They have given us the tools that we need to go and research a problem and work out the best way to solve it.  We have learned how to learn!  I knew that I wanted to route to different pages in my application but we hadn't been taught how to do that.  A couple of hours of research later and I have a navbar with links to different routes/views in my app. I am finding that the research is getting quicker and easier with each new tool/framework/language that I learn.  I have a better understanding of 'how' something should work and where to best find out exactly how to implement it. 

My website will need to be updated as we still have our final project to come (this will be a React front end and Java back end) and I have another wee bit that I'd like to add in but will have to research, but they will both keep for the next iteration. 

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