Hey guys, I’m reaching the end of my boothcamp, and seems like I’m not ready for a job, I can barely solve Algorithms challenges and I’m struggling with react even though it’s supposed to make things easier, I can’t solve plenty of stuff on my own, but I can’t stop since, well it’s a bootcamp you gotta keep going, I think I got left behind a bit after the tip of the final part of Classes and inheritance, not like I don’t know how to declare them, but specifically on how to tacle the daily labs I can take up to 4 hours per lab(out of two), just to endup at 1am evrey weekday it’s really taking a toll on my health now and I feel like maybe I shouldnt’ve gone this way and try part time or stick to UX/UI.
I don’t know, I feel like an idiot by investing money on this knowing that I’m going to struggle this bad, I can place the problems into chunks but when I try to remember all the syntax they used and try to make an approach to solve em, it just doesn’t work, most of the time I can go by through a stack overflow search, but that’s not coding,I feel like I’m learning very little to what’s expected and almost evreyone else seems to do just fine and retain evreything at first glance.
I don’t know what I’m doing wrong, the TA’s barely help you(I could understand that since they’re not there to code for you and just guide you)have anyone else went through this? and it’s not like I’m not motivated, otherwise I wouldn’t be up until 1 am evreyday,I’m really struggling, like bad,really bad.
I am sorry that you are struggling with your bootcamp but I’d like to comment on a few of your points here.
Algorithm challenges can be really tough for a lot of people. So you don’t need to feel bad about that. The first step is identifying that you need to put more time into algorithm practice and you will start to get better. When I first started those challenges I struggled too. So I had to spend extra time on leetcode, FCC algorithms, codewars, etc.
I just finished the react section in FCC and I struggled to remember how certain things worked. But I read up some more on the documentation and even did a small to do list app and that helped a lot. Building more projects outside of a bootcamp will help.
Struggle isn’t always a bad thing. In fact I think you should see it as a positive because it forces you to read more, build more and explore more. If it were easy then you probably wouldn’t have learned as much.
Nothing wrong with stackoverflow or google.
The keywords here are “seems to do fine.” Honestly, you don’t know what their previous background was. Some people might say they are beginners but dabbled with code in high school. It is not healthy to compare yourself with others because you don’t really know their story.
My advice is to finish up the bootcamp and work on the areas that you believe are weaknesses. Revisist parts of the fcc curriculum and do some of the projects. Being able to complete the front end projects will give you some confidence in react. You can also continue to work on solo projects for your portfolio and share them with the forum.
it’s tough, but the toughest part is to keep the grind on even you are beaten by the never ending obstacles. Every single repetition counts, and before you know it, you will be that much stronger as long as you staying in the game.
it will be even tougher and reality will hit you harder when you start to navigate thru the job market, buckle up, keep grinding, and grind strategically.
Based on my past experience, I would say roughly 20% of the time is doing the actual implementation, 30% tech planning on requirements, 50% debugging, and testing. So getting stuck is part of the job.
I’ve been writing code for a few years and I StackOverflow every day. A lot of times, I don’t even understand the underlying reasoning on the answer and I wouldn’t even bother if it is not the main concern to my problem.
Besides the online forum like FCC, which is great for getting insights and questions answer on. I would also socialize more with the cohorts around you to have a different perspective on your concern. You might be surprised that people struggle more than you think, or have a more subjective understanding of what you are lacking compared to others so you could learn from people that are similar to your situation.
Stay in the game and keep on grinding, the tunnel might be long but as long as you keep your feet on, you will come out on the other side.
Besides the grinding, also be strategical with your plan, since I don’t have much more context other than what you have posted, I will just list a few things I would consider based on what I see.
If you don’t have it already, it will be best to have a plan to stay financially viable and be job hunting for a relatively long period of time after graduation.
Depends on the Bootcamp curriculum, it probably tried to feed as much info as possible during the period of time. Some aren’t as cost-effective as others depend on what your target goal is. For example, OOP is rarely a requirement for certain positions like frontend, or other tech stacks where the functional paradigm is commonly used. Know the requirements of the position you are targeting and have the fields of study prioritized based on your goal is.
