As far back as I can remember, my first obsession was the computer game named Minecraft. It tightly gripped my early childhood, with the fascination of open-world building and the opportunity to create friends online on a multiplayer server capturing my attention. As a child, my thirst for knowledge was fueled by fun and excitement rather than the forceful pressure of school. When I wanted to learn more about creating plugins and mods for Minecraft, I would spend hours learning basic Java on YouTube. I was exposed to Java at a young age, and only in college did I begin to dive deeper into advanced data structures and the implementation of more intricate functions and methods.
Thus far, JavaScript is a very forgiving language; it’s clean and simple. This is why I enjoy it more than Java. The syntax for JavaScript allows it to be easier to read and interpreted more efficiently than other languages such as C, C++, and Java. With the incorporation of ES6, it adds incremental changes that provide more powerful tools to the developer. The module provided a good introduction to ES6, and I learned many new things, from arrow functions to spread operators.
I believe the concept of athletic software engineering is crucial for any programmer planning on making software engineering their career field. It provides a sense of heightened focus for those few minutes to be able to efficiently develop a solution. I think WODs are a simple but effective educational tool that helps promote critical thinking skills. Programming is a very perishable skill that requires constant use, or it can easily be forgotten. The constant repetition helps foster a strong base of knowledge and allows new concepts to be more easily learned. For me, the WODs provide me with a type of anxiety that is beneficial for growth. In order to improve in any field, I believe that one should be comfortable with being uncomfortable. I wouldn’t say I love doing this type of learning, but I know that it will help me improve as a developer. So, I’ll start to love the things I hate.