How I learned how to code.

As I wanted to spend my time well, during the two Dutch lockdowns’, I decided to study Web Development through an Ironhack Bootcamp... Now that is an obvious lie, I certainly did not expect to be at home and use our house as my office, my husband’s office, daycare-centre, work-out studio, homeschool-campus & study-den while remodelling our bathroom and kitchen. Still, I managed to graduate as a Full Stack MERN Developer last Saturday. 

Manouk Meilof, GM of Ironhack Amsterdam showed a graph in the introductory zoom session that kicked-off the part-time Web Development Bootcamp. I expected the graph to show a statistic about how many people actually graduate or successfully get employed after taking part. I was wrong, the graph showed the rollercoaster of the emotional states most students go through. I remember thinking that it surely must be an exaggeration and that I would be a steady, solid, studying rock and it turns out, Manouk did not exaggerate anything. From laughing with my fellow students and feeling euphoric at times to feeling doubt about my sanity and breaking down in tears after trying so hard and not making any progress. I truly felt it all.

The Bootcamp is build up from lectures, labs with guided coding exercises and 3 larger projects. After a 5-week block of lectures and practising the theory by coding ourselves, a 4-week project would follow. A project had to incorporate the theory and frameworks we had covered in class.

The first project I picked was a ‘Feedback Generator’. As I am passionate about building feedback cultures, I noticed that most people mean well while they try to provide feedback. What they end up saying or writing often does not achieve the expected outcome. To help people write feedback that provides not only context, observations and the impact it had on them and that functions as a conversation starter. Some of the frameworks and methods I used involved DOM manipulation, Object-Oriented Programming, Responsive Web Design & Flexbox. The end product is a fully functional deployed web app (front-end & back-end) that guides people through how to write constructive feedback. My project can be found here.

The second project I developed was a new webpage for my husband Sander. As he is a vivid GPS-art runner and has an alter-ego called Runbrandt, I felt I wanted to dedicate my time and effort making something for him. Sander took care of our children and fur baby Foss for 26 weeks. Every Saturday, Tuesday evening and Thursday evening he played hide and seek, cooked, cleaned (in his way) and somehow just managed. During this project, I started using API’s. I found myself enjoying the process of creating a Database with his GPS-art in MongoDB and slowly but surely Node started to make more sense to me. One of the challenges I came across it that I finally managed to use one of the API’s provided by Facebook for Developers, which shows an Instagram feed on a webpage and then the API was discontinued. Leaving my husband with somewhat of an empty-looking website. So this project is back under construction. 

My third and last project was to build a learning management system for (aspiring) Customer Success Managers. Customer Success takes more than account management skills. It requires a helicopter view on what’s happening in the playing-fields that your customers operate in while applying Marketing, Sales, training and always having the customers best interest at heart. Courses or live training in this field are pricy while it is often start-ups that benefit from such opportunities. I wanted to see if it was possible to make such a learning platform myself. Turns out, it is possible. Although it is an MVP, I am excited that I created this. Drew out the Customer Journey, trialled and errored my own UX/UI to reinvent it all over again, I learned to use Express and React and applied it successfully. If the owner of Stackoverflow would get one Icecream for each time I consulted their community, they’d be morbidly obese by now. This project thought me so much about myself. About why I feel this passion for Customer Success and it makes me feel reignited to help this field professionalise in the Netherlands. 

They say it takes a village to raise a child. It took 3 super dedicated teachers, 5 wonderful fellow students, a handful of amazingly supportive friends and one husband watching our offspring, to teach me how to code. I thank each of you from the bottom of my heart. Regardless of how difficult I find coding, I hope more people and especially women in my network feel inspired to start to learn about web development. Take a look at Udemy or Codecademy. Check out available scholarships like the one I was granted by Ironhack & Vinted. Trade-in one night of Netflix a week to emerge yourself in the world of coding and discover this whole new side of yourself while you learn. I highly recommend learning how to code.