My Journey to Fullstack Mastery at ALX - Day 3

Day 3's tasks have been the longest so far. I spent four days working on it - never mind the one-day deadline we were given. If it was a weighted project, I may not have taken so long, but I wouldn't be able to finish on time either.

Map your mind

Map your mind is focused on the concepts of pseudocode, flowcharts and algorithmic representations, emphasising the importance of properly understanding what a code does before even writing the first line.

If an algorithm is too complicated to explain in simple terms, it's a sign that I need to go back to the drawing table and start afresh. Using pseudocode is supposed to tackle the logical part of programming such that the only thing one needs to worry about is finding the right syntax and optimising the code, not trying to figure out a solution during the coding process.

This project tested my resilience and willingness to continue doing something even when the excitement surrounding it had faded away. The urge to copy and paste or simply ignore the task grew stronger every time power was restored.

On good days, power in my area is epileptic. On bad days, a two-hour supply would be considered a great mercy. So one can imagine the amount of tasks I had to perform during that slim time frame. A lot of things fought for attention, and they were all important - some were even paid jobs.

Whenever that urge arose, I would close that tab and move on to something else. When my head was in the right place, I'd return to it. I needed to understand pseudocode in its entirety, not just some pieces of knowledge from here, there and everywhere hastily sewn together in a rather chaotic manner. I also did not want to cheat - I'd resolved that copying was a thing of the past and it wouldn't get me far.

Slowly, but surely, I read every resource (apart from the additional examples, as I felt I had obtained a sufficient understanding of the concept and bookmarked it for reference purposes) and watched all the videos.

They were monotonous!

I've lost count of the number of times I slept off halfway into the article or video. I had to spend more on data to make up for it, and it was not a pleasant feeling forking out money to purchase something I misused. I felt bad for wasting the little money I had. But the urge to sleep was strong!

What then did I do?

I broke the resources into bits, small-sized chunks I could repeatedly go over without feeling sleepy. When the urge to sleep came, I'd close it and start doing something more stimulating, only to return to it when I was more alert.

At first, it seemed like it wasn't working, but before I knew it, I'd completed all my tasks.

This taught me an important lesson:

Steps taken are like drops of water; their effects are only visible over time.

0x01. Git

This didn't pose much of a problem for me due to my prior knowledge of Git and version control.

The only issues I had were granting all permissions to my GitHub personal access token, merging conflicts and completing the task for .gitignore files.

I was able to resolve the permissions issue on my own, but I needed more consultations with online resources to solve the others. I'll include links to them here for reference purposes.

• Effective pull requests and other good practices for teams using GitHub

• Git merge conflicts

• Ignoring files

• Ignoring in Git: How To Use .gitignore Files

I wanted to finish pending tasks, so I did a lot of my onboarding projects and their weighted equivalents together. It helped reinforce what I had learnt, and it served as an evaluation of sorts. The only difference between the two task sets was directory names; Git for onboarding used the alx-pre_course repository (and directory, by extension), while the weighted Git task used alx-zero_day.

I did the same for the vi and emacs tasks. While I do not recommend this approach, it can be a good way to ensure that one properly understands the project despite missing the ideal time for task completion (which would be the Onboarding Phase).

In response to ALX's session on Copyright, I have taken down links to ALX concept pages in all of my articles and will not include them in subsequent ones.

On that note, I'll end this article.

Capitis E.

Image Credit: Unsplash, Git brand website