Core Reflections

Over the first five weeks of Dev Academy, we have learnt a lot about the basics of HTML, CSS and JavaScript. We also spent a lot of time learning about "core" concepts. This "core" learning was focused on learning about our soft skills, about constructing learning plans, working with people and managing our minds. This post is all about looking back on some of the core concepts that I have learnt in the past five weeks.

What are three new things you have learnt about yourself and your ego due to the core learning?

Listening

I had always thought of myself as quite a good listener, but after practicing the listening and looping exercise I learnt that by being more patient with my listening I can let people further expand on their topics.

Meditation

Although I try my best to keep an open mind about trying new things, my ego has a strong negative bias against meditation. I find it quite difficult to sit down and let myself meditate.

Growth-Oriented Mindset

I have learnt that I generally have a growth-oriented mindset. I like doing things that have a NET improving effect. I didn't know what the terminology for this was before.

What are the roles of values, empathy and self-awareness in learning and programming?

Values

Values allow you to choose what actions to take based upon what you care about. If you value quality work, you will naturally dedicate more resources to doing quality work. If you value being a nice person, you will generally put more effort into being easy to work with.

Empathy

When programming in a team environment, empathy is vital for ensuring tactful behaviour. Without considering how others feel it is easy to accidentally offend people. When programming, it is also important to be empathetic towards your users. Taking care to ensure accessibility is preserved for as many people as possible is important.

Self-Awareness

When programming, it's important to be aware of your own skills and abilities. If you are new to a language, it is important to be aware of that and use appropriate resources to improve your learning. When learning, you need to be aware of what skill level you are at. If you don't have the basic skills down, you should avoid learning things that are too complicated. If you have a lot of skill, you should avoid going over the basics too many times.

What has surprised you the most about core learning?

The importance that the course puts upon the core learning. I like how we get to spend dedicated time working on these core skills. In the past, core skills have been a very extra-curricular, "tacked on at the end" type of activity. Being forced to dedicate time to researching and writing about different techniques has been really good for my growth.

Why do you think we, a programming school, are spending so much time focusing on core learning in a web development Bootcamp course?

Two main reasons: A lot of this stuff is prevalent in the tech industry, knowing about it will give us a bit of a primer for it and improve employability. The other reason is that it has a high return on investment. Spending a bit of time thinking about how we learn, think and operate overall helps us perform in other aspects of our life. Without spending that time managing our operation, without developing a learning plan or thinking about how we work with each other, will overall be detrimental.

Does the time you spent studying core learning here feel like a waste of time? Should you have just used that time to practise programming instead? Justify your answer.

No. For me, I have come into this course with a bit of coding practice already. Spending time thinking and learning about core concepts has been really helpful for me not just in this course but for my overall life goals. I could have spent a few more hours coding through some more basic web apps and explored a few new libraries.

I am happy with the rate at which I am learning new programming tools as it is, balancing both core and tech learnings has been quite good because I feel like they access diffierent parts of my brain. It's kind of like going to the gym and training upper body on Tuesday then training legs on Wednesday. By learning across a couple of different fields, I feel like I'm not being too overloaded in any one domain.

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