'Mirá, no sos tan superficial como parecía,' me dijo una amiga que conozco hace unos tres años. Uno creería que después de tantos años ya sabría más como uno es, pero la realidad es que no siempre pasa, sobre todo con gente que no vemos tan seguido. Si bien a uno le gustaría que la gente le reconozca tener buenos valores, la realidad es que como humanos ponemos barreras y proyectamos una imagen nuestra que no siempre refleja lo que pasa por adentro. Existe una diferencia muy grande entre lo que muestro y lo que soy.
Lo Que Muestro
No sé cómo habrá sido antes, pero en la era de las redes sociales, lo que mostramos es super importante. Intentamos estar siempre conectados, vivimos pendientes de los 'likes,' en vez de disfrutar los momentos nos preocupamos por sacar una foto para poder mostrarlo. Yo, personalmente, vivo atado a las redes sociales, comparto casi todo. El domingo por ejemplo, estaba tirado afuera, mirando el atardecer y disfrutándolo un montón, pero no me pude resistir, y saqué una foto para Snapchat. Entiendo que es parte del juego y decido participar.
Los humanos, prácticamente, queremos todos lo mismo: sentirnos queridos y sentir que nuestra vida tiene algún propósito. La forma en la que nosotros sentimos es donde somos diferentes. Por ejemplo, para mí algo que me llena la vida y me hace sentir importante, es ayudar a chicos, mientras que para otros es ser grandes empresarios, otros quieren ser bomberos. Con respecto a sentirnos queridos, todos lo sentimos de una manera diferente también, pero ya es más fácil ver que somos parecidos. Un tema muy importante para las personas es la aceptación. Nos sentimos queridos cuando nos sentimos aceptados, y hoy en día, nos guiamos para la cantidad de 'likes' que recibimos en Instagram como medida de aceptación. Nuevamente, no es una critica si no una observación, ya que yo también formo parte de esto.
Al punto que quiero llegar, es que la forma en la que nos mostramos, es tan solo un reflejo de como realmente somos, es lo que mostramos porque creemos que vamos a ganar la mayor aceptación posible. Es también lo que mostramos para esconder nuestros miedos, nuestras inseguridades, nuestros secretos. Lo que mostramos no es todo lo que somos, y me gusta que sea así.
Lo Que Soy
Me gusta que lo que muestro no sea exactamente lo que soy, porque yo puedo elegir a quién mostrarle todo lo que tengo para ofrecer. No me voy a estar presentando al mundo diciendo 'me gusta escribir sobre la vida, me interesa la filosofía, y las canciones de Arjona.' Supongo que podría ser así, no estoy discutiendo si está bien o está mal, solamente estoy diciendo que hoy por hoy así se dan las cosas.
Me parece mágico conocer a las personas, ver como realmente son, qué sueños tienen, qué miedos, qué cosas las motivan. Si todos nos mostráramos como somos realmente, se perdería todo eso. También se perdería lo de ver en quién confiamos y en quién no.
Para mí, mis valores, y mis sentimientos, son super importantes, y no los quiero compartir con cualquiera Quiero que esa persona haga el esfuerzo, y valore conocerme tanto como yo valoro conocer a esta misma.
Conclusiones
La diferencia que existe entre lo que muestro y lo que soy, es bastante grande, y está en las personas tratar de descubrirla. Lo que escribo, soy yo bajando un poco la guardia y dejando que vean un poco de lo que llevo adentro.
Saludos, comentarios, preguntas, como siempre, acá abajo.
miércoles, 16 de diciembre de 2015
miércoles, 25 de noviembre de 2015
Not Your Typical Code School Review: My Journey To Becoming a Developer Part II
So on the first part of this series, I was talking about how I got a lot of negative feedback from my first group project.
Here's what was going on in my head at the time: 'damn, this sucks, I did not see that coming.' Wyncode had started out so well and was little by little getting worse for me. While people were forming groups, playing games, I felt a bit left out. A bit had to do with my leaving at 6pm every day, and obviously some had to do with my attitude. There was nothing I could do about leaving at 6pm, but I could definitely change my approach. I started by doing little things like going to lunch with others or playing video games whenever there was a break. It helped a bit but not as much as I would've liked.
The weeks went by and all of a sudden we only had two weeks left in the program and a final project to do. I approached Spencer and Tasio about working together and making a video game since we all liked them and they had competed in a hackathon (marathon of coding: 48 hours of non-stop programming) where they built the prototype for a game. They politely declined, though I'd later found out that their conversation went something like 'Fuck no, there's no way I'm working with that guy.' Yet another disappointment, but by now I had given up and thought I'd work alone.
Big Risk / Big Reward
Employers would know that I was not good at working with teammates, and in this industry, if you cannot work with people, you are not going to get hired. This truly worried me, and also always look to improve as a person, so I really wanted to get better at the whole team dynamic. The biggest risk of my class came to me and told me he wanted to be part of my group. At first I was skeptical and wanted to say no, but a group of people convinced me that if we made this work, it'd be a great learning experience for me. Another member of my cohort joined too, someone I knew I could really trust because he is a hustler and just works hard, so I figured the worst case scenario we would build the game and just drag this big risk along.
All teams have their issues, especially with such a tight deadline, and especially since we were all pretty lost as to what we were doing. We kept working through our differences for the first ten days, but then our big risk disappeared for three days. Literally vanished, we could not find him anywhere.
When we came back on Monday for class (with three days to go until our presentation), he shows up and tells me he disappeared because he wanted to try and get back with his girlfriend. I thought I was going to kill him, but something told me we should keep him on the team and really just keep pushing for the last few days, it'd soon be over.
We finished our app last minute and really worked on our presentation. Our big risk was super shy and did not like presenting, so we had to really work. My other team member is an amazing presenter, so I knew we needed to let him shine. Again, having a big ego, I wanted to say a lot more during the presentation, but knew if we really wanted to win, he'd be the one doing most of the talking.
Wyncode Pitch Day Rant
Full disclaimer: we won Pitch Day, and I'll get to that in a second, but first, here's a rant. I think that the best application has won only once or twice, in 7 tries. The one that was hands-down the best app in its class was Interque. I think we had the second best app (the best one was Scancierge), but we had the best presentation, and we went last so we got the chance to close with a bang. With so many groups, it's easy for the panel to forget about the applications that go first, so going towards the end helps a bit. Also, the panel tends to be wow'd by cool features, more than complexity. I understand the presentation is a big part of selling an app, but it shouldn't be the only factor. Maybe a way to improve the selection process would be to have the TA's, Ed (lead instructor) and others vote, and then also get the panel to vote and get a composite score or something. It might complicate things more, so the details need to be worked out, but I think it can definitely be improved. How GoodMeasure did not win is beyond me (Hi, Walter!).
End Rant
Anyway, we made an awesome presentation, with a very over-the-top trailer that won us Pitch Day. It was a beautiful moment, we had worked really hard, and our risky member totally crushed his part. His mom was there to see it and they cried together, so that was a beautiful moment.I'm a sucker for happy endings, what can I say? I also learned a lot about working in teams, I could really see the improvement. We coded in groups, we had meetings, we talked via group chat, it seriously prepared me for what was coming next. I also had a great story to tell during interviews when somebody asked what my biggest challenge had been.
Fifty-percent of my promise to Jo was fulfilled, but what about the other half? Wyncode has this program called 'Wynterviews,' where you get to do mock interviews with potential employers. I was very fortunate to have met Watsco Ventures, who were looking for a couple of developers at the time. I did really well in the interviews and got a job offer before the cohort ended. Having fulfilled my promise, I couldn't help but tell Jo 'I told you so!' when given the chance. Wyncode was an amazing experience and did not want it to end. Fortunately, I had a job to start right away.
Life at Watsco
I was confident on the skills I had acquired, but the night before I started freaking out. I kept thinking 'I don't know anything, 9 weeks is not enough' or 'I did well in the interview but they are gonna notice I don't know anything and fire me!' Let me tell you, I couldn't be more wrong. Yes, sure, I was a super-junior developer on my first day, but the foundation I was coming in with, was more than enough to at least be able to contribute.
At first I'd need a lot of help, maybe for the first two months, but after that, it got progressively better and I consider myself to be a mid-level developer. Sure, there are some aspects where I still lack knowlege (argh, still drives me crazy!) but I'm at a point where I can pick things up fairly quickly. At first I did a lot of client-side work, and now I have been working mostly back-end for the past month or so.
Next Steps
Argentina is my home, and I miss it very much. My life is usually divided in two: when I'm depressed because I have just come back from Argentina, or when I'm excited that I'm about to go there. I recently accepted a position that lets me work remotely so I'll get the chance to spend much more time with my family.
I hate leaving Watsco because I have a great team and I have learned so much. Honestly, Wyncode and Watsco completely changed my life. I improved not only technically but as a person. Even Spencer who did not like me very much during the cohort is now a good friend. I also had a conversation with Mario A. about our differences and how they were past forgotten since I really respect him and have worked quite a bit with him since I also TA at Wyncode twice a week. I learned so much from such talented individuals that I want to mention them as well: Gerson, Yandi, Luis, Spencer, Carmen, Ben, Marko, Eduardo, Patrick and Pavel (I'm obviously forgetting someone, so apologies in advance!).
Having said that, I'm always excited for what's coming next and really look forward to continuing with my journey.
Thank you for reading, and as usual, you can hit the comments section with any questions or things to say!
Not Your Typical Code School Review: My Journey To Becoming a Developer Part I
The Early Days
I'd been interested in programming for a very long time, well, I guess curious is the appropriate word. I took the introductory course in high school where I learned a bit about HTML, CSS and Visual Basic (which was in style back in 2005). The following year I couldn't sign-up for the follow-up course (Java) because of AP's, and that was the last time I did anything related to programming in a long time.
I went to college and studied finance because I had no idea what to study (I was focused on playing soccer), and it was what most people were doing. I figured I'd always have an out to a good paying job if I studied finance and playing sports professionally did not work out as expected. I took some computer classes, but nothing programming related. I enjoyed computers and math, but again, I was more curious than actually interested. This was between 2008-2010, but nothing came of it.
Once again, in the year 2012, I was playing soccer in Paraguay so I had a lot of spare time, and started thinking about programming once again. I studied a bit but quickly lost interest because even though there are many resources online, they are not that well structured, and it's hard to go from the very basic ones, to intermediate.
Back In Miami
I moved back to Miami at the end of 2012 after some frustrations with soccer, and enrolled at FIU at night to study math, with the idea of completing a Master's Degree in Computational Finance / Mathematical Finance / Financial Engineering, whatever you wanna call it, basically, applied math for finance. I started learning C++ and really enjoyed programming, more than my math classes. Between math courses (the most important aspect for admission into a top program), soccer and work I didn't have as much time for programming as I would've liked, so I kind of put it on hold. I resumed in March of 2014, learning Python on my own, but only a couple of times a week (if that!) and progress was very slow.
I invited two programmer friends to dinner to see what I could do to speed up my learning, as I realized I really enjoyed programming and wanted to make the career change, I was not too enthusiastic about going to school full-time for another two years, going 100k plus in debt, and then having to move to New York to work for a Wall Street bank (full disclaimer: I was working for a big Wall Street bank, but here in Miami, and had turned down a move to NY). That's when my friends, Igor Guerrero and Sebastian Henao, told me about Wyncode, a dev bootcamp.
Wyncode
At the end of 2014 I presented my resignation to my boss at Morgan Stanley and made plans to enroll full-time at Wyncode. Wyncode is a bootcamp that lasts 9-weeks. It is full-time and you pretty much dedicate all of your time to it. It costs $10,000 so it is a huge commitment, not only because of the cost, but because you are not going to be working for three months also. I knew it was a big risk that I was taking, but I have always worked very hard for achieving my goals and knew it was the right choice.
I started the course in January of this year, and I met with the owner on the first week to discuss what my expectations were. I told Jo that I would get a job to start right away after Wyncode and that I'd also win Pitch Day (there's a final project at Wyncode at the end of the course that I will get into later). Thinking back, she probably thought I was some cocky guy who was in over his head, but to me it meant a compromise, and it'd motivate me to really work hard.
The first week was fairly simple, I had seen most of the concepts so it really flew by. We were given a project to create a game over the weekend, and took it slightly, thinking 'Hey, this is easy, I'll kill it!' I tried to do something with some graphics (I had built some games with Python and Pygame), but unfortunately Ruby (the language taught at Wyncode) doesn't really have a good library for that. I ended up making tic-tac-toe or something, and thought I'd win when we presented on Monday (guess I was actually some cocky guy who was in over his head).
Boy, was I surprised when I get to class on Monday, and this guy, Spencer, who I work with now, has created a role-playing game using the command-line. I was blown away and realized I didn't know as much as I thought I did, first humility lesson of many to come. The second week went well, and I thought I could do this whole thing easily. I got up at 7am every morning to code, then I would go to class from 10am-6pm, and then I had soccer every day so I'd get the chance to start coding again at 10pm. I'd code for 1-2 hours, to get up the next day and do it all over again.
The first month went by easily, I ran into some problems, but with the help of the amazing TA's, plus friends outside of the program, I was doing great. (Gotta take a moment to name them all because they really helped me a lot and I am forever grateful, wouldn't be here without them: Igor, Sebastian, Dainel Vera, Auston Bunsen, Walter Latimer, Frank Ortiz, Ed Toro) There was one problem at Wyncode though, I felt people respected me because I was doing well (in my opinion, up there with Spencer and Tasio, each with different strengths and weaknesses), but did not feel particularly liked. I didn't know how to change this, I tried to make jokes when I got to class, and say 'YOOO!!!' really loudly when I got there, but wasn't working. I wasn't particularly fond of Mario A. (two Marios in my class), and he wasn't fond of me. Honestly, I had no idea what was going on, but I was about to find out.
Falling Back To Earth
After the fourth or fifth week, we started learning the Rails framework, and this was the first time where I truly felt lost. All the concepts were new, there were many things happening behind the scenes that I did not understand (lack of knowledge is one of the things that frustrates me the most), and did not like being told that I did not need to worry about it. Personally, I was struggling but did not want to admit it, after all, I was supposed to be one of the good ones in class. To make matters worse, we were assigned a trio-project and I was working with two other developers for the first time. I thought that being part of a team meant I'd do my part, come back two days later and turn it in. As long as I was doing my part, that meant I was a good teammate. I went to Mardi Gras for the weekend, and I came back to a lot of feedback, of the negative type.
Turns out doing your job does not make you a good teammate, it makes you a reliable one at best, and at worst, it makes you an egotistical asshole who does not care about others and does not know how to work well in teams. The feedback I got from the trio project was all negative, there was nothing to salvage from it. Honestly, it really hurt and my first reaction was to make up excuses on my mind. I could only nod, and walk away, I had just been slapped right across the face.
This is getting super long for a blog post (my original idea was writing a review of Wyncode) so I'll break it down into two parts right here.
Next up: the last few weeks of Wyncode, Pitch Day, job interviews, and next steps.
Hit up the comments section if there's anything you'd like to ask or say!
I'd been interested in programming for a very long time, well, I guess curious is the appropriate word. I took the introductory course in high school where I learned a bit about HTML, CSS and Visual Basic (which was in style back in 2005). The following year I couldn't sign-up for the follow-up course (Java) because of AP's, and that was the last time I did anything related to programming in a long time.
I went to college and studied finance because I had no idea what to study (I was focused on playing soccer), and it was what most people were doing. I figured I'd always have an out to a good paying job if I studied finance and playing sports professionally did not work out as expected. I took some computer classes, but nothing programming related. I enjoyed computers and math, but again, I was more curious than actually interested. This was between 2008-2010, but nothing came of it.
Once again, in the year 2012, I was playing soccer in Paraguay so I had a lot of spare time, and started thinking about programming once again. I studied a bit but quickly lost interest because even though there are many resources online, they are not that well structured, and it's hard to go from the very basic ones, to intermediate.
Back In Miami
I moved back to Miami at the end of 2012 after some frustrations with soccer, and enrolled at FIU at night to study math, with the idea of completing a Master's Degree in Computational Finance / Mathematical Finance / Financial Engineering, whatever you wanna call it, basically, applied math for finance. I started learning C++ and really enjoyed programming, more than my math classes. Between math courses (the most important aspect for admission into a top program), soccer and work I didn't have as much time for programming as I would've liked, so I kind of put it on hold. I resumed in March of 2014, learning Python on my own, but only a couple of times a week (if that!) and progress was very slow.
I invited two programmer friends to dinner to see what I could do to speed up my learning, as I realized I really enjoyed programming and wanted to make the career change, I was not too enthusiastic about going to school full-time for another two years, going 100k plus in debt, and then having to move to New York to work for a Wall Street bank (full disclaimer: I was working for a big Wall Street bank, but here in Miami, and had turned down a move to NY). That's when my friends, Igor Guerrero and Sebastian Henao, told me about Wyncode, a dev bootcamp.
Wyncode
At the end of 2014 I presented my resignation to my boss at Morgan Stanley and made plans to enroll full-time at Wyncode. Wyncode is a bootcamp that lasts 9-weeks. It is full-time and you pretty much dedicate all of your time to it. It costs $10,000 so it is a huge commitment, not only because of the cost, but because you are not going to be working for three months also. I knew it was a big risk that I was taking, but I have always worked very hard for achieving my goals and knew it was the right choice.
I started the course in January of this year, and I met with the owner on the first week to discuss what my expectations were. I told Jo that I would get a job to start right away after Wyncode and that I'd also win Pitch Day (there's a final project at Wyncode at the end of the course that I will get into later). Thinking back, she probably thought I was some cocky guy who was in over his head, but to me it meant a compromise, and it'd motivate me to really work hard.
The first week was fairly simple, I had seen most of the concepts so it really flew by. We were given a project to create a game over the weekend, and took it slightly, thinking 'Hey, this is easy, I'll kill it!' I tried to do something with some graphics (I had built some games with Python and Pygame), but unfortunately Ruby (the language taught at Wyncode) doesn't really have a good library for that. I ended up making tic-tac-toe or something, and thought I'd win when we presented on Monday (guess I was actually some cocky guy who was in over his head).
Boy, was I surprised when I get to class on Monday, and this guy, Spencer, who I work with now, has created a role-playing game using the command-line. I was blown away and realized I didn't know as much as I thought I did, first humility lesson of many to come. The second week went well, and I thought I could do this whole thing easily. I got up at 7am every morning to code, then I would go to class from 10am-6pm, and then I had soccer every day so I'd get the chance to start coding again at 10pm. I'd code for 1-2 hours, to get up the next day and do it all over again.
The first month went by easily, I ran into some problems, but with the help of the amazing TA's, plus friends outside of the program, I was doing great. (Gotta take a moment to name them all because they really helped me a lot and I am forever grateful, wouldn't be here without them: Igor, Sebastian, Dainel Vera, Auston Bunsen, Walter Latimer, Frank Ortiz, Ed Toro) There was one problem at Wyncode though, I felt people respected me because I was doing well (in my opinion, up there with Spencer and Tasio, each with different strengths and weaknesses), but did not feel particularly liked. I didn't know how to change this, I tried to make jokes when I got to class, and say 'YOOO!!!' really loudly when I got there, but wasn't working. I wasn't particularly fond of Mario A. (two Marios in my class), and he wasn't fond of me. Honestly, I had no idea what was going on, but I was about to find out.
Falling Back To Earth
After the fourth or fifth week, we started learning the Rails framework, and this was the first time where I truly felt lost. All the concepts were new, there were many things happening behind the scenes that I did not understand (lack of knowledge is one of the things that frustrates me the most), and did not like being told that I did not need to worry about it. Personally, I was struggling but did not want to admit it, after all, I was supposed to be one of the good ones in class. To make matters worse, we were assigned a trio-project and I was working with two other developers for the first time. I thought that being part of a team meant I'd do my part, come back two days later and turn it in. As long as I was doing my part, that meant I was a good teammate. I went to Mardi Gras for the weekend, and I came back to a lot of feedback, of the negative type.
Turns out doing your job does not make you a good teammate, it makes you a reliable one at best, and at worst, it makes you an egotistical asshole who does not care about others and does not know how to work well in teams. The feedback I got from the trio project was all negative, there was nothing to salvage from it. Honestly, it really hurt and my first reaction was to make up excuses on my mind. I could only nod, and walk away, I had just been slapped right across the face.
This is getting super long for a blog post (my original idea was writing a review of Wyncode) so I'll break it down into two parts right here.
Next up: the last few weeks of Wyncode, Pitch Day, job interviews, and next steps.
Hit up the comments section if there's anything you'd like to ask or say!
lunes, 9 de noviembre de 2015
Ancla de Rescate
No siempre puedo hacer las cosas bien, pero tengo esta filosofía de vida, en la que por lo menos lo intento. Uno es humano y no siempre puede tomar las decisiones correctas, y también es un tema muy subjetivo, pero tengo esta idea de que hacer las cosas bien te trae cosas buenas. Tengo esta loca idea de que si hago el bien, el universo me lo va a devolver. También creo que todos somos un ejemplo para los demás, y que tenemos un compromiso de hacer las cosas bien.
La mayoría del tiempo, las cosas salen bien, y estoy contento con mis decisiones, con llevar la vida así, a pesar de que a veces requiere mucho esfuerzo. Pero siempre llega ese momento en la vida en la que nos toca cuestionarnos nuestras decisiones, nuestros valores. La vida es así, te da y te quita, te facilita el camino o te pone piedras en el mismo para salir más fuerte y aprender. Entiendo que esto es parte de vivir, de crecer, y lo llevo bien, pero hay veces en las que nada sale bien, y ahí arrancan los cuestionamientos.
¿Cómo puede ser que la mina que me gusta esté con ese pibe que la vive cagando? Yo nunca cagué a nadie, pero evidentemente no importa. Esa persona que le debe plata a todo el mundo esta de vacaciones por europa, y yo que tengo todo al día, pago impuestos, etc, no puedo. ¿Qué onda? ¿Vale la pena ser tan honesto, si mi compañero que vive mintiendo ahora va a tener una mejor posición que yo?
Sé que me estoy dejando influenciar por lo que hacen otras personas, y que solo debería preocuparme por lo que hago yo, por mis decisiones. Pero bueno, a uno de vez en cuando le agarra la desesperación y se cuestiona si realmente vale la pena ser así (la respuesta es sí, obviamente!). A veces realmente me cuestiono si realmente el universo me va a devolver las cosas buenas porque parece que no, y parece que a la gente no le importa. En estos momentos de frustración, tengo la suerte de contar con dos personas que me ayudan a mantenerme firme.
Mi Ancla
La vida es para vivirla compartida, siempre necesitamos de otras personas para seguir adelante. Cuando todo me da vueltas en la cabeza, y digo, ¿sabés qué?, no me importa nada, hago cualquiera, tengo mi ancla de rescate para mantenerme firme. Bueno, en realidad tengo dos. Son dos personas que sé que realmente valoran mi forma de ser, que me toman de ejemplo para algunas cosas, y que cuentan conmigo. No me gustaría defraudarlas nunca, y cuando me estoy por mandar alguna cagada, me pregunto: ¿le podría contar esto a ellas y estar orgulloso? Si la respuesta es no, entonces sé que estoy por hacer cualquiera, y me ayuda a retomar el equilibrio. Por esas dos personas, sé que todo vale la pena.
Conclusiones
No siempre lo que escribo tiene sentido, y de hecho, esto lo estoy escribiendo hoy pero no me siento así hace un tiempo. Muchas veces necesito escribir porque tengo una mezcla de pensamientos y de sentimientos dando vueltas en la cabeza y necesito escribir para entenderlos mejor. Escribir me ayuda a hacer catarsis, me ayuda a mantener el equilibrio. Son vivencias muy personales, y no todo el mundo va a estar de acuerdo, o no todo el mundo va a entender lo que trato de decir. Pero estoy convencido de que a más de una persona le agarran estas dudas existenciales, y si puedo ayudar aunque sea a una persona, me voy contento.
Para los que tengan ganas, pueden dejar algún comentario.
La mayoría del tiempo, las cosas salen bien, y estoy contento con mis decisiones, con llevar la vida así, a pesar de que a veces requiere mucho esfuerzo. Pero siempre llega ese momento en la vida en la que nos toca cuestionarnos nuestras decisiones, nuestros valores. La vida es así, te da y te quita, te facilita el camino o te pone piedras en el mismo para salir más fuerte y aprender. Entiendo que esto es parte de vivir, de crecer, y lo llevo bien, pero hay veces en las que nada sale bien, y ahí arrancan los cuestionamientos.
¿Cómo puede ser que la mina que me gusta esté con ese pibe que la vive cagando? Yo nunca cagué a nadie, pero evidentemente no importa. Esa persona que le debe plata a todo el mundo esta de vacaciones por europa, y yo que tengo todo al día, pago impuestos, etc, no puedo. ¿Qué onda? ¿Vale la pena ser tan honesto, si mi compañero que vive mintiendo ahora va a tener una mejor posición que yo?
Sé que me estoy dejando influenciar por lo que hacen otras personas, y que solo debería preocuparme por lo que hago yo, por mis decisiones. Pero bueno, a uno de vez en cuando le agarra la desesperación y se cuestiona si realmente vale la pena ser así (la respuesta es sí, obviamente!). A veces realmente me cuestiono si realmente el universo me va a devolver las cosas buenas porque parece que no, y parece que a la gente no le importa. En estos momentos de frustración, tengo la suerte de contar con dos personas que me ayudan a mantenerme firme.
Mi Ancla
La vida es para vivirla compartida, siempre necesitamos de otras personas para seguir adelante. Cuando todo me da vueltas en la cabeza, y digo, ¿sabés qué?, no me importa nada, hago cualquiera, tengo mi ancla de rescate para mantenerme firme. Bueno, en realidad tengo dos. Son dos personas que sé que realmente valoran mi forma de ser, que me toman de ejemplo para algunas cosas, y que cuentan conmigo. No me gustaría defraudarlas nunca, y cuando me estoy por mandar alguna cagada, me pregunto: ¿le podría contar esto a ellas y estar orgulloso? Si la respuesta es no, entonces sé que estoy por hacer cualquiera, y me ayuda a retomar el equilibrio. Por esas dos personas, sé que todo vale la pena.
Conclusiones
No siempre lo que escribo tiene sentido, y de hecho, esto lo estoy escribiendo hoy pero no me siento así hace un tiempo. Muchas veces necesito escribir porque tengo una mezcla de pensamientos y de sentimientos dando vueltas en la cabeza y necesito escribir para entenderlos mejor. Escribir me ayuda a hacer catarsis, me ayuda a mantener el equilibrio. Son vivencias muy personales, y no todo el mundo va a estar de acuerdo, o no todo el mundo va a entender lo que trato de decir. Pero estoy convencido de que a más de una persona le agarran estas dudas existenciales, y si puedo ayudar aunque sea a una persona, me voy contento.
Para los que tengan ganas, pueden dejar algún comentario.
lunes, 26 de octubre de 2015
La Vida Es Una Maratón, No Una Carrera de 100 Metros
'Lo difícil no es llegar, es mantenerse' es un dicho muy conocido del fútbol, y se refiere a lo complicado que es poder mantenerse al nivel más alto del deporte. A las personas nos cuesta muchísimo armar planes a largo plazo porque nos enfocamos demasiado en obtener resultados a corto plazo. Miles de metas tienen una fórmula simple para cumplirlas, como por ejemplo adelgazar. Simplemente hay que consumir menos calorías de las que consumimos, o en otras palabras: hay que comer menos y hacer más ejercicio. Uno pensaría que con lo simple que es este método, sería fácil de logarlo, pero todos sabemos que no es así. Nos gusta ver resultados, pero no nos gusta el proceso para obtener los mismos.
Personalmente, muchas veces me pasa que empiezo una actividad y si no tengo un plan, la dejo a los diez días. Me pasó recientemente con una clase online de algoritmos. Me re interesa el tema pero no quiero estar dedicándole el tiempo porque se que no me va a dar resultados de inmediato. Dejar una actividad o un proyecto no está mal en si, el problema resulta cuando uno se toma la vida de esta manera.
La vida no es una carrera de 100 metros llanos, son 42 kilómetros con vallas. Casi todos podemos correr 100 metros sin problema, pero conozco pocas personas que pueden terminar una maratón. Para correr semejante distancia, se necesita mucha preparación, tanto física como mental. Lo mismo, por lo menos para mí, aplica a la vida. Si bien eso de vivir cada momento como si fuera el último, y lo de enfocarse en el presente tiene sus puntos válidos, no creo que sea un gran consejo cuando pensamos a mayor escala.
Preparación
Como los corredores se preparan para una maratón, nosotros tenemos que prepararnos para algunas cosas en la vida. Tomando la universidad como ejemplo, si nos dijeran que tenemos que ser ingenieros en cuatro años y no nos dieran ninguna otra instrucción, a la mayoría se nos complicaría lograrlo, pero dividiendo esta meta en cuatrimestres, y esos cuatrimestres en un par de materias, se hace mucho más factible terminar una carrera.
A mí me gusta dividir metas en objetivos más chicos, me ayuda mucho a organizarme, y también puedo ver progreso más rápido. Volviendo al ejemplo de la universidad, rendir bien una materia me acerca a mi objetivo de terminar la carrera. Saber que uno está progresando es la clave para mantenerse motivado. Si dependemos solamente de fuerza de voluntad, hasta la persona más voluntariosa termina sufriendo muchas veces.
Tener un plan para mí es importantísimo, y es el método que aplico a todo lo que hago. A veces escribo los pasos en un papel, muchas veces tengo una idea general en la cabeza, pero la constante es que por lo menos soy consciente de que tengo que romper un gran objetivo en pedacitos. Pedacitos que no siempre se dan como me los había imaginado, pero es normal, no se puede pretender ir cumpliendo todo al pie de la letra, porque cosas inesperadas pasan todo el tiempo.
El objetivo más grande que tengo empezó hace casi tres años, y yo pensé que lo alcanzaría en dos, pero así es la vida de inesperada, y hay que saber adaptarse. La constante, fue que siempre fui progresando, aunque fuera algo mínimo, y eso me mantenía motivado, me ayudaba a seguir dando el siguiente paso.
Conclusiones
Todavía no cumplí mi gran objetivo, por ende no quiero decir nada para no quemarlo, pero creo estar muy cerca, y los que me conocen saben qué es. Haberme hecho un plan me ayudó a aguantar hasta en los peores momentos, y ver progreso continuo me ayudó a mantenerme motivado todo este tiempo.
No veo la hora de cumplirlo.
Personalmente, muchas veces me pasa que empiezo una actividad y si no tengo un plan, la dejo a los diez días. Me pasó recientemente con una clase online de algoritmos. Me re interesa el tema pero no quiero estar dedicándole el tiempo porque se que no me va a dar resultados de inmediato. Dejar una actividad o un proyecto no está mal en si, el problema resulta cuando uno se toma la vida de esta manera.
La vida no es una carrera de 100 metros llanos, son 42 kilómetros con vallas. Casi todos podemos correr 100 metros sin problema, pero conozco pocas personas que pueden terminar una maratón. Para correr semejante distancia, se necesita mucha preparación, tanto física como mental. Lo mismo, por lo menos para mí, aplica a la vida. Si bien eso de vivir cada momento como si fuera el último, y lo de enfocarse en el presente tiene sus puntos válidos, no creo que sea un gran consejo cuando pensamos a mayor escala.
Preparación
Como los corredores se preparan para una maratón, nosotros tenemos que prepararnos para algunas cosas en la vida. Tomando la universidad como ejemplo, si nos dijeran que tenemos que ser ingenieros en cuatro años y no nos dieran ninguna otra instrucción, a la mayoría se nos complicaría lograrlo, pero dividiendo esta meta en cuatrimestres, y esos cuatrimestres en un par de materias, se hace mucho más factible terminar una carrera.
A mí me gusta dividir metas en objetivos más chicos, me ayuda mucho a organizarme, y también puedo ver progreso más rápido. Volviendo al ejemplo de la universidad, rendir bien una materia me acerca a mi objetivo de terminar la carrera. Saber que uno está progresando es la clave para mantenerse motivado. Si dependemos solamente de fuerza de voluntad, hasta la persona más voluntariosa termina sufriendo muchas veces.
Tener un plan para mí es importantísimo, y es el método que aplico a todo lo que hago. A veces escribo los pasos en un papel, muchas veces tengo una idea general en la cabeza, pero la constante es que por lo menos soy consciente de que tengo que romper un gran objetivo en pedacitos. Pedacitos que no siempre se dan como me los había imaginado, pero es normal, no se puede pretender ir cumpliendo todo al pie de la letra, porque cosas inesperadas pasan todo el tiempo.
El objetivo más grande que tengo empezó hace casi tres años, y yo pensé que lo alcanzaría en dos, pero así es la vida de inesperada, y hay que saber adaptarse. La constante, fue que siempre fui progresando, aunque fuera algo mínimo, y eso me mantenía motivado, me ayudaba a seguir dando el siguiente paso.
Conclusiones
Todavía no cumplí mi gran objetivo, por ende no quiero decir nada para no quemarlo, pero creo estar muy cerca, y los que me conocen saben qué es. Haberme hecho un plan me ayudó a aguantar hasta en los peores momentos, y ver progreso continuo me ayudó a mantenerme motivado todo este tiempo.
No veo la hora de cumplirlo.
miércoles, 11 de marzo de 2015
rubyquest - Day Fourteen
We have come to the end of the second week coding RubyQuest and it's been a roller coaster ride.
The first four days were lost as previously noted, other than some experience and some graphics that we carried over.
We finally implemented the AJAX post requests to check the player's answers against our database. It took a bit of time to get it just right, but it wasn't too complicated overall. The problem we were having was that we had the function inside our update, which runs at 60 frames per second. The problem this caused was that we would end up sending over 200 post requests every minute. This would have been a problem, having many users playing the game at the same time.
Fortunately, we realized we could have the function defined in our create, and just send it once from update, and we got to only send one post request now.
We also added collisions to the world map. It took a lot of time to do the graphics, doing an RPG was always going to be a very ambitious project, but we really wanted to do more and more every day, so we really had to get to the point where we said 'okay, this is more than enough for two weeks' and put an end to our world expansion. We have three layers of tiles, and we collide against the middle one. It is not quite pixel perfect yet because of some bounding box issues, but it gets the job done.
Pitching!
We have to now record a video of our play through to have for our pitch. We want to have it playing with a nice trailer for our audience.
We are freezing the code Sunday night and we are right on schedule.
The first four days were lost as previously noted, other than some experience and some graphics that we carried over.
We finally implemented the AJAX post requests to check the player's answers against our database. It took a bit of time to get it just right, but it wasn't too complicated overall. The problem we were having was that we had the function inside our update, which runs at 60 frames per second. The problem this caused was that we would end up sending over 200 post requests every minute. This would have been a problem, having many users playing the game at the same time.
Fortunately, we realized we could have the function defined in our create, and just send it once from update, and we got to only send one post request now.
We also added collisions to the world map. It took a lot of time to do the graphics, doing an RPG was always going to be a very ambitious project, but we really wanted to do more and more every day, so we really had to get to the point where we said 'okay, this is more than enough for two weeks' and put an end to our world expansion. We have three layers of tiles, and we collide against the middle one. It is not quite pixel perfect yet because of some bounding box issues, but it gets the job done.
Pitching!
We have to now record a video of our play through to have for our pitch. We want to have it playing with a nice trailer for our audience.
We are freezing the code Sunday night and we are right on schedule.
martes, 3 de marzo de 2015
rubyquest - Day Eleven
Last wednesday we had asked if we could demo our game live at Waffle Wednesdays, a weekly morning event where people from the Miami tech scene get together to eat waffles and discuss all matters tech. Sometimes, people do presentations so Team RubyQuest thought this would be a great opportunity to get some early feedback on how we were doing.
The only problem was that while we thought we would be just showing our game and getting feedback on that aspect, the expectations were that we would be actually pitching our entire application as if it were the official Pitch Day that's happening on March 12th, 2015.
We only found out about those expectations today, Tuesday, at 10am, so that gave us less than 24 hours to prepare a slideshow, rehearse it and have a presentation ready. That would have been enough time except for the fact that we also have class and we also have to keep working on our project, so that was much less time.
Where to Begin?
We asked a TA to help us and we had no idea were to begin. Our first ideas were really bad and we got negative feedback, but that helped us notice that we were approaching this pitch from the wrong angle. We started brainstorming and liked some ideas, and started putting things together at around 4:00pm.
A key question asked by almost everybody was: 'why are you making an HTML5 game while everyone else is making a Rails application?' which seemed obvious to us, but obviously was not to everybody else. We realized that we needed to really show why we are making this game and what we hope to accomplish, which is to give back to the tech community that we are now a part of and that's been great to us, by preparing the next generation of coders in a very fun and immersive way.
Here's were the concept of gamification comes in. We want to complement the user experience by offering a very engaging environment. Getting deep into a story to us is one way to achieve this and that's why we are making RubyQuest.
In Other News
We are almost done with incorporating the Puzzle functionality which is a big part of our game. After speaking to the 'guru' of our game, we get taught a lesson on Ruby, and an input box appears on our screen. The user needs to input a response to the challenge posted, and that input gets sent to our server, which checks our database, and comes back with either a successful or erroneous response.
We have the AJAX post request working on our server side, we just need to finish implementing it on our game.
After eleven days, we have really learned a lot, and every day we keep learning more and more, we feel very confident that we will be ready to take on the next challenge as soon as Wyncode ends, and the junior developer quest begins.
The only problem was that while we thought we would be just showing our game and getting feedback on that aspect, the expectations were that we would be actually pitching our entire application as if it were the official Pitch Day that's happening on March 12th, 2015.
We only found out about those expectations today, Tuesday, at 10am, so that gave us less than 24 hours to prepare a slideshow, rehearse it and have a presentation ready. That would have been enough time except for the fact that we also have class and we also have to keep working on our project, so that was much less time.
Where to Begin?
We asked a TA to help us and we had no idea were to begin. Our first ideas were really bad and we got negative feedback, but that helped us notice that we were approaching this pitch from the wrong angle. We started brainstorming and liked some ideas, and started putting things together at around 4:00pm.
A key question asked by almost everybody was: 'why are you making an HTML5 game while everyone else is making a Rails application?' which seemed obvious to us, but obviously was not to everybody else. We realized that we needed to really show why we are making this game and what we hope to accomplish, which is to give back to the tech community that we are now a part of and that's been great to us, by preparing the next generation of coders in a very fun and immersive way.
Here's were the concept of gamification comes in. We want to complement the user experience by offering a very engaging environment. Getting deep into a story to us is one way to achieve this and that's why we are making RubyQuest.
In Other News
We are almost done with incorporating the Puzzle functionality which is a big part of our game. After speaking to the 'guru' of our game, we get taught a lesson on Ruby, and an input box appears on our screen. The user needs to input a response to the challenge posted, and that input gets sent to our server, which checks our database, and comes back with either a successful or erroneous response.
We have the AJAX post request working on our server side, we just need to finish implementing it on our game.
After eleven days, we have really learned a lot, and every day we keep learning more and more, we feel very confident that we will be ready to take on the next challenge as soon as Wyncode ends, and the junior developer quest begins.
lunes, 2 de marzo de 2015
rubyquest - Day Eight
After a full week and a day since having started our project, we are finally at the point where we can focus on adding content without worrying about the basics of the game such as walking, animation and dialogue.
We decided to manipulate DOM elements in game and we are using jQuery for that. For example, our menu covers the entire screen and it pops into view if we press the 'M' key on our keyboard. Pressing M toggles it on and off for now, but we'll probably just show and have to click exit to toggle it off or something, we are still deciding.
Dialogue works when our character is within a certain distance of a non-playable character and we press the spacebar. We are planning on adding a mini-game as well, and some easter eggs that will add flavor to the game. Even though for our pitch day we can only demo a couple of minutes of the game, we want to be as thorough as we can.
AJAX
A feature we still have to implement to our game is the puzzle challenge. Basically, we'll pop up an input box on our game and we have to type the challenge as is being described on our dialogue box. The challenge for us is going to be sending an AJAX post request to our server, to check against our database, and then get that get request back to keep going with the game.
We are not sure how to do this yet, but I'm confident we can get it working by the end of the day.
Pair Programming
On Friday night, we implemented pair-programming for the first time, with one person driving and somebody else watching and helping out. It was a great learning experience as I had not done it personally and learned a lot from it. There are some pictures of that day that we will be posting later.
jueves, 26 de febrero de 2015
rubyquest - Day Four
So after four days of using LimeJS and the Google Closure Library to code our game, we realized that moving forward, it would bring us more problems than solutions and made a decision that should almost never be done: we switched frameworks. In our case, I believe that it actually made a lot of sense. LimeJS is very good for what we were trying to accomplish, but unfortunately, it's a framework that's not actively developed. We chose Phaser because it's the most popular JavaScript framework for games and it has a very nice and active community.
So, after four days of coding, we decided to scratch everything and start from zero. Our biggest problem with LimeJS was doing animation and movement, and we were able to solve that with Phaser in about 4 hours.
But No Framework Is Perfect
The problems with frameworks is that not one will cover everything that you need. While movement and animation is a lot easier with Phaser, transitioning from scene to scene is harder. Also, doing dialogue and inserting labels onto the screen can be hard. The way we are approaching that is by manipulating the DOM rather than the Canvas element of HTML only.
We have jQuery code that toggles on/off our dialogue boxes, and also our main menu. This way, we call it from our game with the press of a button, and then it'll just show up on top of our game.
This approach might not be the tidiest but it works for what we are trying to do and it's pretty simple to implement. It'll also be good practice for when we have to implement our puzzles which will send an AJAX request to our server from an input box.
Our demo is almost done and we really need it for tomorrow as we need to present it for us to keep the project alive.
So, after four days of coding, we decided to scratch everything and start from zero. Our biggest problem with LimeJS was doing animation and movement, and we were able to solve that with Phaser in about 4 hours.
But No Framework Is Perfect
The problems with frameworks is that not one will cover everything that you need. While movement and animation is a lot easier with Phaser, transitioning from scene to scene is harder. Also, doing dialogue and inserting labels onto the screen can be hard. The way we are approaching that is by manipulating the DOM rather than the Canvas element of HTML only.
We have jQuery code that toggles on/off our dialogue boxes, and also our main menu. This way, we call it from our game with the press of a button, and then it'll just show up on top of our game.
This approach might not be the tidiest but it works for what we are trying to do and it's pretty simple to implement. It'll also be good practice for when we have to implement our puzzles which will send an AJAX request to our server from an input box.
Our demo is almost done and we really need it for tomorrow as we need to present it for us to keep the project alive.
domingo, 22 de febrero de 2015
rubyquest - Day One
After assembling the team on Friday, this past Saturday, February 21st, we finally sat down with team !Fer (pronounced 'not fair') to start coding. For our Pitch Day we are creating an Educational RPG, which may actually be the first of its kind. We decided to go very JavaScript heavy for our final project as it's not our strongest language and we really want to learn it. Also, HTML5 games are the future in gaming as it supports many different platforms. We are aiming for web and mobile support for our game.
The Framework
We chose LimeJS as the framework we'll use to run our game as it provides us with the best tools for what we are trying to accomplish. It uses the Google Closure Library, which was used to create Gmail for example. It's a very powerful library, but from what we've seen so far it can be quite tricky as it's pretty much a new language itself.
We decided to take Friday night and Saturday morning as our 'learn the basics' day. That meant that we would watch tutorials, read documentation and look at source code to get a feeling of what we were getting into. I can say that Mario, Travis and I went through this cycle of 'what am I doing!?!?' to 'I got this!!' and back to 'what am I doing!?!?' many times throughout the day.
The Coding
The Framework
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We decided to take Friday night and Saturday morning as our 'learn the basics' day. That meant that we would watch tutorials, read documentation and look at source code to get a feeling of what we were getting into. I can say that Mario, Travis and I went through this cycle of 'what am I doing!?!?' to 'I got this!!' and back to 'what am I doing!?!?' many times throughout the day.
The Coding
Since we need an actual website to run our game, we also decided to use Rails to power it up. We are going to need a database to store some information for our game, and we also want to have some features such as a Forum where players can interact, post questions, get help, etc. We also want to implement a Reviews section so we can get feedback on our game. Lastly, the website is going to have a Log In system that we will build from scratch instead of using Devise as it will not only be a great learning experience, but it will also let us customize it as we please.
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After quite a few hours of coding, we were able to accomplish quite a few things but we are having some problems using the keyboard to run our game. So far we've only been able to use the mouse which is not ideal but at least it works for now. We've reached out to different developers who have used LimeJS in the past to see if they can help us with this issue.
Going Forward
We really would like to solve the issue of using the keyboard for input, we are really going to need it for our puzzles, but so far we've created a mousepad that we can use to move our character around. We are using free art that we found online so far and we have not yet implemented animation to our walking but we will get there eventually I am sure. We'd like to have a five minute playable demo by Friday, so then we have another two weeks to really polish the game.
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