It’s been two weeks since I started working here at CDOT and I can confidently say that I still have no idea what I’m doing. I’ve been thrown into a mess of Javascript, HTML 5, and a project with a nomenclature that would make Orville Redenbacher pop with joy.
Yeah, I went there.
So where does that leave me? Confused? Greatly. Eager to dive in and start working on a project I’m actually interested in? Absolutely.
I’m going to be starting my fifth semester come September and I can honestly say that so far the BSD program has been a breeze. Sure there may have been a course or two where I’ve had to put in more effort because of the sheer amount of work assigned, but nothing has been particularly challenging. For once I feel as though this is going to change. I feel like a puny warrior armed with nothing but a wooden sword and shield about to face a troll of epic proportions. Thankfully, I’ve had the help of the Popcorn team to guide me. Last week I started reading JavaScript: The Good Parts while David Sefried started explaining the player module of Popcorn. This module allows developers to use non HTML 5 media sources with Popcorn. In retrospect, this might not have been best way to start learning Javascript. The book isn’t exactly aimed at complete JavaScript beginners like myself, and, as Dave and I soon found out, there were some things that even he didn’t know. It was a great opportunity for both of us to learn something new. I was particularly impressed by his patience in explaining the things I didn’t know. He must have spent more time helping me than actually working on his assigned tickets or reviews. This week Chris continued the job of helping me fix bugs for the various tickets I was assigned. In fact, two of them, #1036 and #1062 have already been staged!
2 down, 157 to go.
Next week I’ll try to tackle some of my tickets with less help from Chris (or Dave if he comes back), hopefully finishing at least one on my own. A lofty goal, no doubt, but one that I’m ready to take on.