Doing it the hard way

Good morning from Pearland, TX. So how have things been going here at Coder Camps this week?  Awesome!

We've been using SQL, Entity Framework and LinQ this week. This has given me access on the backend to functionality I already learned how to use on the frontend. For me, this is actually very exciting. Yes, I'm different, I know.

There's a persistent pattern at Coder Camps - learn it the hard way first, then the easy way. We don't learn JQuery here, we learn how to manipulate the DOM with plain vanilla Javascript.  We don't learn how to query Firebase with their ready-to-go API calls, we how to code out RESTful AJAX calls in Javascript first. With SQL we learned how to do our queries in SQL first, then learned to use LinQ.

The first few weeks of this pattern can be frustrating, especially if you know there's an "easier" way that you just can't touch yet. But there is a method to the madness. Programing goes deep. I won't pretend we're diving all the way down - this course is designed to make you job ready, not to make you an expert on the vast oceans of knowledge that are Computer Science systems, algorithms, and theories.

But we don't just live on the surface either. If all you can do is use JQuery, or use someone else's APIs, then programming must feel a lot like magic. And what do you do when your magic wand breaks? Writing out AJAX calls the long way in Javascript gave me a much better understanding of what happened when the browser communicated with the database. So when I got to use Angular's $resources, I knew what it was doing. Likewise, setting up tables and queries in SQL made using a Code-first approach much more intuitive for me.

There are a lot of different ways to learn to code. Coder Camps won't be where my learning experience ends (it won't ever end, that's one reason why I picked Programing as a career), but its been a great place to start!