Killing it! Also much more knowledgeable!

Alright, so my past 2-3 days have gone quite well IMO. I ended up doing the Codeup tests that they sent me (check them out yourself!):

• Math test - MUST STOP at 40 minutes! So set a timer
• Logic test - Same as above...make sure to get some paper to write with

Well, I didn't feel that I did all that well but I was asked in for an in person interview. I got to check out the space which was pretty cool, and during the question portion I just COMPLETELY crushed it. The instructor mentioned that he never saw anyone complete his logic puzzles as fast as I did. Granted, I have some programming experience and I have just finished the algorithm course at Khan Academy. Most of the questions were based on understanding how variables and functions worked (assuming he would be speaking with a non-programmer). The puzzle he gave me was essentially to solve a sorting algorithm which I used insertion sort to complete.

Anyhow, the course is like 15K and I had just the night before come across The Odin Project. Well, needless to say...this is what I have been looking for all along. A great compendium of self learning material that I can follow to complete my gaps in knowledge. I have always been more of a self teacher anyway so if I can save 15K and become a complete BAMF by going through this material then so be it.

Aparently the creators say it should take you about 1000 hours to complete everything, however that is equated to grabbing all of the gold stars in Mario 64 for someone who has never played a video game in their life. After doing some poking around the webs, I came across this great post by someone else who had completed TOP from top to bottom. He addresses some tweaks to the program based on his knowledge and understanding (most of which I agree) including skipping some sections and spending longer on others.

He does a GREAT breakdown on the time it will take to get through everything, and so instead of 1000 hours I have pegged an estimate for myself at around 400 hours conservatively, based on that he said 254 hours should be the bare minimum of time. That puts me at around 3-4 months of study WHILE working full time (considering I can give about 35 hours a week to it).

I am okay with this time frame, as it STILL is quicker than waiting until Feb for Codeup to begin and then completing their 4 month course. So, worst case...I take 6 months and end up at the exact same position lol.

So what have I learned and what has been interesting to me in the last 2 days?

So far I have completed all of the Intro to web dev (section 1) and I'm about a quarter of the way through Web Dev 101 (just about to complete the project for HTML/CSS)

I learned about Trello. I had heard about it by reading a post from a guy who hires interns, that his team had built it specifically for their purposes. The interviewer at Codeup mentioned that they use it. I checked it out and it seems pretty cool. Would be much better for a team of people, however I wouldn't be hurt by trying to organize myself a bit more. If I can utilize it a bit more I think that would be good.

Going forward I want to really keep track of what I learn each week, and the time spent. I believe it would be a good metric / resource to look back on as well as to show other people on the same path, as...well that is kind of my thing! I really enjoy teaching others.

Who knows, maybe a year or so down the line I can upgrade / contrib to a project like TOP or create my own similar learning path for another stack.