Week #1 @ Hack Reactor

Following a very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very. very, very long tradition of Hack Reactor students writing week by week blog posts reflecting on their experiences, I’ve decided to write a blog post every week about my experience at Hack Reactor. These blogs were so influential in my decision to come to Hack Reactor that I thought I’d be unfair for me not to contribute to the conversation.

From Day 1 to Day 2

Day 1 was the toughest day of the week for me. There’s wasn’t anything particularly special or difficult about it, but I had been second guessing my own decision to come here for so long that, during the first day, I was unconsciously trying to probe to myself that I had made the wrong decision. There was a point during that first day where I was convinced I had screwed up. Thankfully, I kept going! By the end of day 2, I was absolutely convinced I was right where I needed to be.

Hack Reactor does a great job of quickly showing off how great of a program it really is. Day 1 and day 2 are intense! I can honestly say I learned a lot in these two days. We were immediately thrown into, what I would consider, intermediate to advanced JavasSciprt (closures, this, recursion). If I had already learned so much in the first two days, I can’t imagine where I’ll be in 12 weeks!

Learning Culture

One of the reasons my hesitation evaporated so quickly by day 2 is how much I liked and respected the culture at Hack Reactor. From day 1, expectations are made crystal clear about how everything works and what is expected of you. Everyone expects you to take responsibility for your own learning. A lot of what you learn at HR is learned through self-directed learning. This might sound counter-intuitive, but it makes students so much more engaged in their own education. I was so amazed that, even at day 1 and 2, people were staying late to finish and improve their projects and read up on the next day’s presentations. I just loved that level of dedication! During many of our lectures about Hack Reactor, staff talk about going “above and beyond the call of duty”. This sounded cheesy at first, but I think everyone here takes that pretty seriously and it shows in the level of dedication staff and students show every single day.

###JavaScript Fundamentals

For most of the first week, the focus was on JavaScript fundamentals. You might think this means variables and functions, but COME ON! This is Hack Reactor! Didn’t you read the paragraph above?

Instead, we spent a week talking about closures, this, different types of inheritances patterns. I already knew most of this stuff, but even though I’ve read a couple of really really good books on JavaScript and have been writing JavaScript for about 2 years, I still learned a lot during this sprint. It’s amazing what a good explanation can do. Listening to some of the lectures on these topics I felt mostly embarrassed that I’d written so much JavaScript before and yet, I didn’t really understand these concepts as well I as I thought I did. Seeing one of the slides on this Marcus showed on after one of our lectures, I felt like I’d already gotten my money’s worth for my tuition.

Awesome People

Having been a self-taught programmer for so long, I never met a lot of programmers through out my life. I’ve any met a handful of programmers who I consider to be as good and as passionate as I am (Hey, I’m a bit cocky. Get used to it). That has all changed now! I’ve met so many people who are so smart, so knowledgeable, and so passionate about software engineering. It’s been quite humbling for me to meet so many people who, in a couple of months, are already at the level that they are. Honestly, I don’t know if I would be able to handle all this without a head start.

So guys, you’re fucking awesome. Stephan, Thomas, Tony, Will, Mike, Nick, Sarah, Silvia, Krystal, Loring, Mike, Jon, Johnathan, Dustin, Erwin, Evan, Grant, Chase, Corpus Chris, David, Jimmy, Kingsten, Doug, Brian, Caroline, Catherine, Charlie, Alex, Alex, Ash, Beth it’s been an awesome week #1. Can’t wait to see where we are in January!