Fullstack Academy – Week 3

June 22nd to 26th.

There are 57 days in Fullstack. These are the third 5.

Day One – Monday

My feelings on FQL represented by an emotive – 😐
Really enjoyed the lecture on Promises today. The partner I worked with (Nirmohi) was really in sync with how I worked.
Looking forward to more promises being made. Hehe. 😋

The twitter-js project was fun, but this twitter-sql business is just a whole nother ballgame, and I’m not sure if I really like playing… ⚾️⚾️⚾️
On the other hand, Mongo seems nice. The docs are definitely cleaner…

I actually tried doing exercise in the morning by going to the swimming pool with my Tia Ceci. It was fun and all, but it definitely requires more effort so I’ll probably just do that sort of thing once a week.
Really want to share that presentation (the one featuring all the cool web dev stuff) soon – but I’m going to hold off until I’ve made a few more tweaks.
The workshop went really well today – got a good partner and progress was made.
There was a brief alumni panel today as well and I’m pretty impressed that this one alumnus is already going to be working on Dropbox even though his cohort graduated in April (?)(somewhere around that time) of this year.
- Basically what my conclusion was from the panel is to make sure to work on side projects and prepare appropriately for the hiring stages/white board interviews.
- I do have experience with white board interviews and they are quite scary. However, I don’t blame most companies for keeping that strategy since it is pretty hard coming up with effective methods to truly test the ability of able programmers.
- 💡I really like what Aline Lerner has to say in general about technical recruiting since she also feels the same way I do in regards to resumes being pretty ineffective for evaluating programming skills.

The testing process for our Wikistack project of yesterday was much less exciting, but at least I didn’t struggle horribly with it and consequently get the urge of sinking into some deep dark hole.
For the third (?) time at Fullstack, I get food from some place other than Lenny’s.
- So naturally I screw it up by ordering a bloody personal pan pizza instead of just getting those jumbo slices all the NYC pizza places are used to selling. The wait is at least 15 minutes as they customize my cheese pizza to satisfy one person. Lesson learned. 🍕
- Given that I am just now realizing that I strongly prefer stability when it comes to my food, I can suppose Fullstack is just forcing me to rediscover my true relationship with food. Although it might also just be because Lenny’s just has a lot of Latino workers.
🍴 My learning team lunch today involved playing this board game that featured a lady with a big bust for the cover.

See?

Avalon Set Up

Set in the primitive medieval era, Avalon forces people to lie and identify as either a good or bad person, which has never made sense to me (not just the good vs bad schematic, but the whole light vs dark color theming, etc.) because I’ve always identified as both a good and bad person.
- Regardless, the game was a lot of fun because it involves the wicked art of deception and people just made a bunch of accusations all throughout which led to a lot of laughter and random banter.
- I myself don’t feel I’m terribly good at lying, but people have told me before that I have a great poker face or that I’m just plain shady. The quiet ones are always a little crazzyyyy…
- Anyways, the good people (such as myself) won, but only because the bad kids weren’t very good at being bad. Shucks.

Shoot, today was a mad race against time.
In other words, it was a crazy day, but the good kind of crazy.
My little team and I had to solve these different programming puzzles that related both to the American Museum of Natural History and to our instructors.
I don’t want to spoil anything, but the great part about the first half of today was that I felt a lot like Robert Langdon running around all these historically relevant places with some hot chick constantly solving puzzles/riddles and figuring out where the next clue will lead him.
- Of course, in my case there wasn’t any hot chick and the only location I was running around in was the museum itself, but hey – that museum is exceptionally large.
- I mean, could you guess the Latin name of this dino?
- Exactly.
After that whole warp back in time was over and done with, I had lunch with Kelsey and Jovia at this yummy vegetarian place. This is when I finally found out that same sex marriage is finally legal EVERYWHERE. WOOT WOOT!!!

Once all was said and done and we headed back to Fullstack, I was very full and tired, so the lecture on Promises didn’t get the attention it deserved from me.
Thankfully though, afterwards, by some freakish and questionable miracle, I’m not struggling with the workshop that much at all. Mmmhmmm.
The last thing of the day of course is 🔥 Hot Seat🔥 and once again I find myself most delighted by the stories of my fellow peers.
Good times.