Engineering Empathy Cooldown
Two days ago was our last Engineering Empathy session of Phase 1. Like the other cohort told us : “You thought the first session was heavy? Wait ‘til you see session 3”.
First week was “The superego”, and the exercise that we got was “Share what your inner voice tells you”. This week was “Dive deeper in what you let people know about you”… And so we sat in circle to tell people stuff, while starting every sentence with “If you really knew me”. Now let me tell you guys… There were tears, hugs, revelations, but no shocked reaction, no judgement, nothing like that. And everything told in this room stays in this room.
Diving deeper than the usual in what you tell people is an exercise that does make us grow, but that also hits you hard at the moment you do it. And listening to all of the others’ is not even easier. I think I can safely say that I will keep that day in my mind for a very very long time.
ActiveRecord
ActiveRecord is the design pattern I told you about yesterday. In Rails, the most well known web framework for Ruby, this design pattern is implemented in its own. What it does, in short, is mapping a database with an object. Columns of the database become attributes of the objects, you can create objects and save them to the db, or get objects from an entry in the db. Quite easy and practical!
Yesterday, we worked on that for the whole day. The morning was the introduction, and the afternoon the application. I’ll say that it was a pretty good day, I learned a lot, and ActiveRecord is cool… Wait… Better than that : ActiveRecord is coolER than SQL!
My first solo day
Wednesdays are optional solo days. That means that every other day, we have to pair or group with more people, but on wednesdays, we choose our pairs/groups. I did not solo until then, but I thought that to save my voice I’ld try and do so yesterday.
In the end, I did finish the exercises, which was my goal. I had to go to other people soloing a couple of times, to get my mind off of the problems that were blocking me, and to help me figure out solutions sometimes, but I did it and I am pretty happy about it.
The beginning was hard and I just … felt like I did not know where I was going. But I got on it after I expressed my incomprehension a first time, and then I just worked, with a decent speed.
I don’t know if I’ll do that again, probably not next week, but probably another time. It was a good day but I prefer picking my pairs in the people I do well with (Looking at you Irene!).
Anyway, today is assessment and group project… time to have fun !