Coding bootcamp: post-wrap

Week Nine: Day Five

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The course ended a week ago but the work hasn't, and today — actually, the last couple of days — we've had mock interviews to help prep us for hiring week next week. I really wasn't ready to go and had a million things on my plate, but B stressed how important it was. She also said we'd be doing it in groups, so I felt more okay about there not being as much pressure to have all the answers ready.

It turned out I didn't have to worry about things that much. The mock interviews were divided into two half-hour segments, front end and back end, and we were in groups of 4. Our group had N for the front-end portion first and we just ended up answering questions in a clockwise manner. I was first, and the first question of the session was to explain M-V-C. Yay, a soft one! My strength in this course has always been I've been good with the theoretical aspect of things, which has meant my weakness was bridging the gap between that and the practical. Here's the answer I gave:

C: Stands for "Controller", which is like the quarterback of the whole operation. Every rails app utilizes M-V-C and the controller calls the plays and instructs everything else what to do.

M: This is for the "Model", which is like the playbook the quarterback (aka Controller) uses and contains all the tricks the team will use.

V: Last, but not least, is the "View". This is how the instructions from the Controller to the Model are rendered to the user, such as tweaking the HTML and CSS depending on whether the user's using a mobile or desktop device.

Turns out N loved that answer, and I got a bit of a supercharged boost for the rest of the session (which went quite a bit longer than the scheduled half hour). And it was mostly, I think, that I got the easiest questions of the session, or maybe that the questions I got just serendipitously matched with my knowledge, but I feel like I did kinda sorta okay.

The back-end session was a bit different. Coffee Maker was in my group and we've had a tenuous relationship for pretty much the entire course, but I wasn't feeling shy tonight about letting him have it when he did things like interrupt me or challenge me needlessly. The session also ran about twice as long as scheduled, but it was good because B really drilled home a lot of points and didn't let us four slide on anything. I was sweating little bullets for the latter half of it, but I figure that it'll never be as easy as it is now, so why not put myself out there and have my mistakes corrected as much as possible? They certainly won't be in the real thing — I'll just get dismissed with no feedback — so I may as well put myself on the line as much as possible now.

But I still always feel like this: