Day[50] My Brain Needs an API

For the last few days we have been covering APIs. It’s a subject that has loomed in the background of almost every technology we’ve covered thus far, particularly the MVC apps that we were building a few weeks ago.

It’s been difficult. Today, I went to Tom’s office and confessed that I’ve been having trouble, basically asking for a personal lesson. I don’t do this often. Or ever, really. I try to figure out as much as I can on my own and only hit up Tom if I know I’m stuck on something stupid. I figure when I’m on my own (hopefully in less than a month), I’m going to have to figure out a lot of this stuff through my own google searches, so I may-as-well figure out how to do it earlier rather than later. But today, I felt pretty lost.

The thing is, I don’t think that APIs are that difficult to figure out. API stands for Application Programming Interface. It’s a way to get a lot of data without keeping your own database. Think of it as one application connecting to another application for the means of accessing info. Almost every website you use either has an API or connects to someone else’s. It’s a little tricky, because we’re using Vanilla JavaScript for the front end, a language which I’m learning at the same time as I’m learning about APIs. But, really, you just have to put in the right lines of code in the right order and everything will work. There isn’t a ton of tricky logic to it.

I think my difficulties are really an aggregate of several things. JavaScript is new to me, I’m more adept at C#. We’re not doing as much homework and, though I know I should be pleased with this, the lessons aren’t being pounded into my head with repetition like the lessons from week’s past were. I have three interviews tomorrow and those seem more important than learning the daily lesson. And, when it comes down to it, I’m probably experiencing some burnout.

I remember a speaker from one of our showcases. He was a former TE graduate who is now working at a company. When asked what the most challenging thing about his new job was, he said, “Probably dealing with the APIs, because when we learned about them it was the end of the program, I was looking for jobs, and I was totally burned out. I couldn’t focus on anything. “

At the time I thought, “That’s not going to happen to me. I can keep pushing and pushing and pushing. It’s only fourteen weeks. I could do this for a year if I needed to.”

To a degree, it’s true. I can keep going. I can keep putting in long hours. I can keep completing the homework and focusing on everything Tom says during class. But things just aren’t sticking like they did a few weeks ago. Sometimes when Tom’s talking, I’m listening to each individual word and it seems like they don’t fit together into a logical sentence. Maybe my brain is all filled up.

I have interviews and no class for the next two days. So there won’t be new information and there won’t be new assignments. This is good. The interviews are anxiety-inducing, but, really, I look forward to them. They’re a long time coming. And maybe two days of behavioral interview is just the rest the logical side of my brain needs.