It’s the morning after the night before and my self-confidence has been rocked by an adversary that goes by the name of JavaScript. Is it too soon to start crying? No? Okay great. This week we started on the building blocks of programming and my aforementioned nemesis was there to welcome me. For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been feeling good because I like CSS and I’ve learned a lot. Note to self, you knew going into this bootcamp that JavaScript was not a strong point for you. Hi Rob, this is your future self telling you that this is temporary. It’s okay to feel uncomfortable but I promise you that we’re going to make it. I already know that you have built and understood blocks of JavaScript because you’ve fist-pumped the air before when it’s clicked. Remember that dark mode toggle button you made? See you can do it, have a little faith in yourself and trust the process. It seems tough because you’re leaving your comfort zone. Now get back to your blog.

I’m going to keep this short and sweet. I have asked lots of questions this week to help me understand the code I’m writing. I attended the Saturday session too and can’t say a bad word about the help I’ve received from Command Shift. I’m not ashamed to say I’ve struggled.

I haven't been fair to myself and I haven’t contextualised my learning process. By that, I mean that I’m learning something new and implementing my understanding into the katas. Sometimes the tests passed and sometimes they failed. When I get something wrong I’ve been giving myself a hard time about it. The result for me is self-doubt and a feeling that I must be doing something wrong. On paper that makes total sense. I haven’t written my code in a logical way to enable the test to pass. And that’s fine. Do most people understand the logic the first time of asking? The reality is simple. I’m learning to write tests for a programming language that I am nowhere near fluent in. So why am I being so hard on myself? That’s the context. Imagine being handed a basic phrases book for a foreign language and then being expected to have a fluent conversation with somebody local that speaks their mother tongue moments later.

To the goblin inside my head that is trying to convince me that I can’t do this, be quiet because I am talking! Do you remember when you said that I could never go to university because I put people that did on pedestals? What did I do about that? That’s right, I completed an Access to Higher Education course and graduated Goldsmiths, University of London four years later with a 2:1. How about the time you thought cycling was beyond someone like me? I had my best year to date in 2021 and completed the London to Brighton in June 2022. You also said I wouldn’t be able to run 5km. Well, goblin, I have surpassed 500km this year and completed 5km runs around three different stadiums in three different countries - in a day! Don’t tell me I can’t do this because I’m the chip on my shoulder. I’m going to trust the process, part of which is realising how far I’ve come and how much there is that I still don’t know. That’s ok, I’m going to be kinder to myself and just like Rob Zombie said, I’m “never gonna stop” my coding journey. Although, that might have been a mistranslation on my part. Onwards.