Today was another one of those amazingly frustrating days that ended up fairly rewarding once things finally clicked. It started off with lectures. So many lectures. So many many lectures.

I guess we have more lectures this first week than any other week in the program. Part of that is obvious since there’s a lot of new student orientation stuff, there’s new computer science concepts to introduce, etc. But we were in lectures seemingly all day.

A sample of the lectures we had today:

How hash tables work
Test Driven Development
Language Details and Style Guides
Function Binding
Student Outcomes Program

Holy cow. And on top of that, there was an optional after hours lecture on Sublime and keyboard shortcuts from 8pm to 9pm, (which was awesome)!

In the limited time we had to code today, my partner and I were able to work through a few solutions. And then we got stuck with some method not working out when checking a tree for contents. And got stuck. And got stuck.

Like all day! My partner means well, but it takes a few times for them to really grasp concept. They continuously forget how certain methods and functions work and it’s just a really slow process. I guess these are the difficult parts of pair programming that are supposed to make us more skilled and effective communicators!

Anyway, while he was working through the problem and getting some help and explanation from HIR mentors, I was writing my own (RECURSIVE!!) function that would potentially solve the problem. I was still having little luck.

During dinner, I ambushed another classmate and we went through my code line by line. I was outrageously confused why my own implementation for our solution wasn’t working. They quickly noticed I was passing the wrong parameter into my recursive function.

ARE. YOU. SERIOUS.

I changed one line of code and it all worked, all tests passed, etc. I was elated and steaming mad (at myself) after realizing that. I tried to show my partner but they didn’t really understand what I did and wanted to try it a different way. Ah well. The good news is that I did it through recursion! Amazing! I’ve written like 4 recursion functions in the last 3 days.

Then it was time for lectures, more lectures and bonus lectures.

One of the lectures we had was from the Student Outcomes team. These are the people are teach you how to get a job, negotiate offers, and support you in your job search (immediately after Hack Reactor and in subsequent jobs in future years). It’s a really neat up sell and one of the reasons that made me want to attend Hack Reactor.

They showed a graph of graduates from 2014. About half of their grads found jobs within 6 to 8 weeks of leaving the program. That was amazing! Then they showed a graph that denoted the highest offers these graduates received (whether they accepted them or not). There were a number of buckets, but I found a few really interesting:

# of Graduates: Salary Range

51: $80K - $99K
93: $100K - $119K
43: $120K - $139K
6: > $140K

That’s a pretty amazing distribution. The biggest bucket is right around the $100K to $120K range, but a good number of people were in higher ranges. That’s really amazing! (The bucket with lower ranges potentially represents people who moved to other areas with lower salaries, etc).

One thing the lecturer mentioned was that there was no correlation between previous computer science degrees or engineering backgrounds and salaries. 4 of the people in the $140K+ bucket did not have CS degrees, one knew nothing about coding before Hack Reactor, etc. That’s really reassuring!

Anyway, after that lecture ended and the bonus “Sublime shortcuts” lecture ended at 9pm, I again stayed by myself to work on these data structure problems. There are a lot to go over and I want to make sure I rally understand them – it’s such an essential part of being a software engineer! Plus, a number of HIRs and seniors have said that having a solid understanding of these concepts will make the rest of the program much easier

I got some help and advice from an HIR who stayed late and gave me some great pointers on things to consider when writing to a hash table.

Anyway, after working through some problems on my own, I finally packed things up and left the building at 10:15PM. Another late night! I’m racking up the extra hours.

But I am feeling it. My head feels really foggy right now and I’m going to crash the moment I get home.