After months of searching for a job, I finally got some contract work! Turns out, I connected with the right person at the right time. 10 PM on a Thursday, trying to network, someone was looking to get a team together to do some work on a side project he had been getting ready to start.
While it was all very fast and exciting, I was brought on based on the Ruby on Rails experience I had learned in my program. Looking back at it, the first 6-weeks of the program dealt with Ruby on Rails as our backend. I think it was taught based on all the features you get out of the box. This was enough to get me started making full web apps and a mobile app by the end of the program.
While this is what got me the role to jump on the project, I was in a world moving very fast. By the time I got to the wireframe in whimsical, my head was spinning at the scope of this project. It was obviously more advanced than anything I had done before, and the planning also had the relationships the project would be needing already mapped out with a legend.
The person running this is very on top of things, straight to the point and incredibly good at what he does. I was sent a link to something that would help with authentication and authorization. This was the most advanced thing I learned during the program and was very impressed with this gem. It automatically gave you routes that dealt with sign-up and sign-in with minimal coding. While tinkering with this, I was sent a pull request with authentication done as it is a complex process, the owner wanted to set us up with a good starting point. Looking at the code he had pushed up I realized I have a ways to go in my coding life. Granted this guy has a decade on me, it's very eye-opening to see complex code on a project I will be contributing to.
The initial feeling I’m experiencing is that of fear and not being able to hold my own on this project. I must keep in mind that I have felt this before, and I have come out the other side better and with more knowledge. I have also been reminded that this is not the first field I have felt this way. I was reminded that I made it through all the other times and I should expect the same outcome. I know it will take some time to find my groove, but I am ready to take on the challenge and I am going to use the fear to fuel my drive to be successful in my first true coding gig.
