SQL

In the world of development, we could say that you have plenty of choices when picking your tools. Among these tools are hundreds, if not thousands, of languages. Some are pretty specifically used, even though they may not have been made for, some are pretty “fast” while others are “not”… But all in all, we can say that a hammer is a hammer. No matter the brand or the specs, the hammer will fulfill his role and that’s it.

Anyway, yesterday we used SQL for the second time in phase 1. It is a language used to talk to a specific type of database (Any derivation of SQL), which may very well be one of the most common database type in the world, and that has been the case for more than 20 years. The language used to do so has been around for almost the same time too…
I paired with Tim, a very nice and tall guy, and we ended up doing as much as we could for the day. We learned tons, we played a bit, and it was fun. All in all, a good day, even if we spent the day on SQL…

Games

So, Web Development, and maybe even particularly in Dev Bootcamp, is a world of hard work combined with games. My opinion is that we party, we play, we develop games even, to cope with the rest of the hard day. A lot of brain-twisting challenges and very not fulfilling days spent on solving that bugs that would have taken 2 minutes to solve if you had seen that semi-colon earlier will do that to you and may ask for harder entertainment.

In DBC, we play. There are games all around, the Giant Djenga falls a couple of times a day, we did a Hack-a-thon this weekend (A coding contest where teams build stuff and compare at the end of the day. All with beer, pizzas, and a lot of laughter), and all in all, people are playful.

Yesterday we played Magic The Gathering with a couple of boots. I did not win but I loved the game. A long game, hard, where you have to think before you do stuff. It had been a long time and now I just regret I did not bring my cards myself ;)

Assessments

DBC is not about grading students. It is not the style of the house. But they do have to test us to make sure we can understand the next phase. So, to do that they assess us at the end of every phase.

This week is the end of the first Phase. Teachers will get with us for a short amount of time on Thursday and will review some of our code at this point. At this moment, no more help, just some control of your knowledge. At the end of that, we can be given one of 3 different options :

• Your level is high enough, welcome to Phase 2
• You may want to spend 3 more weeks on Phase 1, just to make sure you get it all
• Are you really sure you are learning anything? If not, DBC may not be the best thing for you…

Now, let’s hope for mine being the first one! I’ll do my best anyway.
Small info for the people in the next cohorts : We chose our assessments. The output may be the same but you may not get the same.

Anyway, lecture is about to start again, let’s go. Thank you for reading and see you tomorrow!