My Reflections - Sprint Five

Minesweeper

What was the hardest moment of this challenge for you?

The hardest moment was probably the countSurroundingMines function as I had initially made mistakes in the startGame( ) that affected the error messages while debigging. It took the better part of 2 days of researching and trying something new before I eneded up asking another student for help.

Did you have any blocks during this challenge? How did you overcome them?

I had blocks through pretty much all sections of this exercise. The first couple of times I took a little breather before trying something new. Then once I got stuck again I moved on to a different part of the exercise before coming back and having a look at it again after writing some pseudocode for it. I overcame it by asking for help from both another student and a facilitator.

What learnings are you going to take away from this challenge?

Loop structure. When to use while loop instead of for loop in functions. Calling objects from array of objects and adding to them using functions. Separing functions into smaller more straight forward functions before putting it back in intended fuction via function call and why this is useful. Basically.... all of it?

If _you_ were responsible for curriculum development at Dev Academy, would you change this challenge in any way? How? Why?

Possibly write instructions to make them more clear as I found a lot of it quite difficult to follow at times. I feel like being able to write the surroundingMines fuction yourself may be helpful in understand the task a bit beter, although that would increase the time required to complete the exercise. I would also start the challenge off by explaining exatly what the initial array objects should include as things like, isMine, isMarked and surroundingMines could all be pushed to it later.

All in all, this was an excellent learning platform and a way to force a lot of critical thinking and problem solving. Despite how stressful it was at times, this whole exercise felt really rewarding.

Pair Programming

Do you have any prior experience pair coding? If so, what was the experience like for you? If not, what is your initial reaction to pair programming?

I have never done pair programming. It looks like it could be chaotic to start off with but it could definitely be beneficial. I struggle on my own, especially as a begginer at times, with spelling mistakes and syntax errors but I find it quite easy to spot when watching a video tutorial of others coding.

Do you personally think working and pairing with others will be a challenge for you during bootcamp? Why so?

I dont think so unless the other person does not have a compatible personality and views. I find that this could potentially cause conflict and more harm than good. Some people may be prone to being more defensive than others while others may have low self-confidence and does not deal well with micro-management style of learning? I'm not opposed to it, personally I think I NEED it.