I’m Brazilian. I’ve lived in Brazil almost all my life and after that I’ve moved to Australia. I hold a Bachelor degree in Biomedical Science and in AustraliaI I did Laboratory Techniques course, so I could work in the lab. I lived there for 5 years and in the end felt that it is not for me, that I overgrew that. But I always loved working with computers.
When I was a kid, my father had an old computer and I was always crashing and formatting it. And since I moved to Barcelona because of my husband’s studies and I had to start fresh again, I decided to come back to computer science that I always had an interest in.
I always liked programming and it was a great opportunity. Through the course that my husband is doing I’ve met a person [our former student Brianne] that had done this bootcamp. She advised me to come to one of the Open House events and check out the school. I also send the curriculums of all the local code schools to my friends that work in the field. They told me that this course was the right fit because it has all the new technologies and the languages that are relevant now. The other important thing is React Native, because I think no other school teaches it and it was a plus.
You don’t really see the time passing by as it goes really fast. One thing I was telling my friends that you only notice that you’ve learned something during the last week. I was doing my mobile app and when I finished writing the code I was like: “Yeah, I did it by myself without any help from Google!”.
The amount of information received by students during the bootcamp is enormous and it’s the most challenging thing because it is a really short amount of time to learn a new language. If coming with no background in computer languages, learning the logic so fast was a difficult thing. Pure JavaScript was 2 weeks and then we moved to React and then to the server with Express. Remember that you need to learn how to connect all 3 of them. It’s a lot.
The main motivation for me to keep on was the subject of the course, it’s really interesting for me. And when you are creating a website you can see what you are doing. When we did the app I first opened it and the emotions were like: ¨Wow! It's here! I can move, add things and use it.¨ It is a really rewarding feeling.
After I’ve graduated I’m planning to practice as much as possible and apply for the job. I found out that I’m more of a back-end person. It is funny, because at the Mobile Congress event I’ve been talking to people and they were surprised that I was really into back-end and not into design or front-end.
I really enjoyed the bootcamp and here is my advice for the future students – do the pre-course. And during the course while working on your projects – keep it simple first; if you’d want to add more stuff to your website or app, it’s always easier to go adding them one at a time later. Don’t overthink!
Thaisa graduated from Web / Mobile Development Bootcamp and at the moment of writing is working as a Software Developer at reach.shopping, Barcelona.