Imagine drinking from a firehose – it’s more water than you could ever drink being blasted into your face with incredible force. Now replace the water with the entire food menu from an Italian restaurant. Was that a meatball that just struck me in the face? Or perhaps a high velocity chicken parm. Tomato! I definitely taste tomato. I know there were some herbs – likely basil but honestly could have been rosemary – impossible to tell given the velocity of the stream.
Now, replace the lasagna and antipasti with modern web technologies like React, websockets, and docker, and you essentially have the experience of Week 1 at Fractal Bootcamp.
The Fractal curriculum for full stack web development is intense – 60 hours and 6 days a week for 12 weeks – but the pace of learning and building is intoxicating (I thought of using another word, but this feels accurate actually). The amount of focus required to internalize several different syntaxes, data structures, and languages all intermixed is both overwhelming and the most mentally stimulated I’ve been in months. What a pleasure it is to be able to find a source of flow state that I have previously only found directing films, public speaking, or brainstorming user experiences.
While I can’t claim to fully understand each technology we’ve touched this week, I feel good about my rate of learning and understanding. I trust my knowledge will compound and reach an escape velocity where the meta-patterns between languages start to emerge more clearly for me.
Tomorrow is Sunday – the only day off during the week – and while I’m appreciative I’ll get time to play some tennis, I’m already hungry for next week’s menu. As Gordan Ramsay says, the first step of cooking is tasting. This week I taste tomato, by the end of the program I expect to be able to determine San Marzano chopped vs peeled. Then, it’s time to cook.
Can't wait to start building my own full stack apps.