No, it’s not the Most Valuable Player. At least, not when it’s used in the business sense. MVP in the computer industry (and most of the business world, I think) means Minimum Viable Product.

A minimum viable product is the goal at the beginning of a production plan. One of the first questions one might ask when starting a project is, What’s the MVP? Then you work towards that goal–to have a functioning product. After the MVP is achieved, then you go about improving it.

I’m happy to say that this afternoon, I was able to bring my side-project to MVP status. My side project is a book recommendation app. I have a database with some books (only 50 for right now, but I’m adding to it) and then a program written in C# that takes the client through a series of survey questions and then recommends some books based on the answers to those questions.

I have grand plans. I want users to be able to log in and have a profile. I want users to be able to bookmark their recs and save them in the database. I want the ability to peruse all the books based on keyword searches. I want the user to be able to suggest books that should go into the database. I want to be able to email my users their recs through the app.

I can’t do most of that yet. But the main idea of the app, the soul of it, if you will, is that a user fills out five survey questions and then is given a list of books that they might enjoy. That’s heart. That’s the minimum viable product. And, as of today, that works just fine.

The ratio of how impressive this is to how happy it makes me is all out of whack. It’s a fairly simple program. But I worked hard on it when there were a lot of other things I needed to work hard on. And I had some trouble with the main piece of code over the last few weeks. So, when it finally got working, it felt pretty good. There may have been some strutting.

But now the real work of the app begins. Now, I have to make it run smoothly and look nice. Tomorrow’s task. And the next day as well, perhaps.

They took it easy on us today.

Instead of the normal lecture, both classes converged in the main room and Java Tom (as opposed to .NET Tom) taught us about a testing framework called Selenium. It was a nice change of pace and useful information, as PNC Bank uses Selenium in their coding and likes their new hires to have some experience in it.

There was no homework on the Selenium lecture, so I instead spent the afternoon boning up on CSS Grid and trying to do something about my abysmal front-end skills. I walked through a tutorial on Free Code Camp explaining the subject and, surprisingly enough, I got better quickly. I was able to skip back a few lessons and straighten out a product page on the homework that I was previously unable to herd into a sensible layout. Too late to improve my grade on it, but still, I know how to do it now.

Then, around 4, we started drinking.

It is our halfway happy hour (though we are a bit more than halfway). It was once again at a bar called Beirs around the corner from the TE building. They bought us apps and invited all of the former graduates to come and hang out. I talked to a few of them. One TE grad who is now working at FedEx showed me this keyboard with a new layout called Dvorak. It’s crazy. All of the vowels are in the left-hand corner in a line. He says it makes you type faster once you get used to it. It sort of blew my mind. I might try it.

I also talked to a TE grad named Tek, who is now working with the consulting company CGI. He had some really interesting things to say about the pace and the on-boarding with that company. I was already interested in working there, but his opinions shot it further up my wish list.

All in all, a good night and a good end to the hardest of weeks.

Tom finally admitted it. After four days of homework-palooza, he told us that this was the hardest week. With the four to six hours of homework a day, the five hours of showcases, the mock interviews, the updates to our resumes, the updates to our LinkedIn, and our reviews on our capstones–I can believe it. People are starting to crack.

People are cracking so much so that Caitie addressed the whole .NET class about it. It was a culmination of many things, I think. The tasks listed in the last paragraph have hit some of the students really hard. On Monday, Tom reminded the class that homework was due two days after it was assigned. Of the 16 students in .NET, only eight of them had turned in the assignments for that day. Talking on the break, I found that many are behind even further than that. Having struggled with the last capstones, some people had days of backwork to catch up on leading into this, the most hellish of weeks.

But maybe an even bigger stresser than the work is the redoubtable phantoms of the job search–the resumes, the interviews, the waiting game of getting called back. It’s right around the corner. We had behavioral practice with Caitie this week, technical interviews with the instructors next week and then it’s game on. We’ll start applying. Things once theoretical will get real in a hurry.

So Caitie gave us the pep talk. She reiterated what Tom had said, that this was, indeed, the hardest week. She said to remain organized, prioritize the work in the classroom, and come to her with any problems or if the stress gets too great.

Coming to the end of the hardest week, I feel pretty good. It was tough, yes. Counting up the hours (which I should know by now not to do) I’m going to log somewhere in the range of 60 to 70 this week. But as I type this, I’m basically caught up. The quality of my homework hasn’t been stellar, but it’s all turned in and I feel confident that I’ve learned the lessons. And that’s all I can ask for, I think.

Today, something that I was looking forward to with trepidation turned out to be not as bad as I expected. The story of my life.

Our Pathway project for today was group mock interviews. This means that four of us at a time (two .NETters and two Javas) entered a conference room with Caitie. She then went round-robin, asking each of us behavioral interview questions. The person being questioned was the interviewee and the three other students were meant to be a panel who, along with Caitie, were judging the response.

It was tense. It was awkward. But it was probably the most helpful Pathway project yet–and that’s saying something.

I did some prep for this interview. Caite had sent us a slew of behavioral interview questions (think: tell me about a time when you made a mistake, tell me about a time when you were challenged by your superior, tell me about a time fill-in-the-blank). I knew from past failures that I am not so good at answering these questions on the fly. So, jotted down answers to four of the questions, filling up the front and back of a piece of notepaper.

When I got into the interview, I listened to Caitie’s question, decided which of my pre-canned answers fit mostly closely with the theme, and told the tale, altering it ever-so-slightly to make it coherent. It worked out pretty well.

It was good to say some of these answers out loud in an environment with no consequences and it was good to hear other students’ answers to questions which I might one day field. There will be more mock interviews in my future and I look forward to them now, knowing that the experience will soon pay off.

Things are moving quickly now. We are in the middle of the MVC Design style, which finally allows us to build web applications. We are also gearing up for the day when we begin applying to jobs, which is just two weeks away. Both the technical lessons and the Pathway Program are hitting their apex, and the crush of assignments and information has a dizzying effect.

On the coding side of things, it’s nearly impossible to keep up. As far as I can tell, there is not one .NET student who is currently up to speed on the exercises that are due. Today is Tuesday and on Monday we were assigned pair programming which took four hours and then individual exercises which were even more difficult. The next day, after the lecture, we were assigned both pair programming and individuals again–another six to eight hours of homework.

That’s a lot of stuff. But that’s only half of it.

Caitie and the Pathway Program have also been ramping things up. We will be allowed to apply to jobs on March 18th. But before that fateful date, Caite wants to make sure that we are completely ready. We had updates to both our resumes and LinkedIn profiles on Sunday. On Monday we each had a meeting with Caitie to receive feedback from the mock interviews from last week. Today through Thursday, we will be having group mock interviews with Caitie as the interviewer. We will be in with her, four at a time, as she asks behavioral interview questions. Then, the other students in the room will give feedback to the person who answered. It’ll be awkward at best. But useful.

On top of that, it’s open season for showcases. We had three last week and three more this week. The showcases are nice, I like them and it really educates me about the opportunities in Pittsburgh. But it’s another one to two hours of the day filled up with tasks when the canyon of homework looms, when the interview prep haunts, when our resumes and online personas stare like lifeless dolls needing to be breathed to life.

The days are long and trying. But we keep pushing forward.

I’m hoping to have found a second gear. Or maybe a third or fourth. I don’t know.

I wasn’t totally thrilled with my performance at the end of last week. I bailed out on a tech talk that I had been planning on attending and on Friday I cut out at 3:30 when I still had work to do. In my defense, I had a bit of a cold. My throat was sore and I was a little more tired than usual. But I think it was mostly burnout that sent me home. It was less that I was tired and more that I just didn’t want to wring my brain any more.

Regardless of how I got there, I didn’t like the feeling Saturday morning. I decided that after seven weeks, I need a refocus. In the first month I approached my assignments like learning their lessons was the only thing that was going to keep me alive when I was lost in the wilderness. I had to exhaust myself on every single last detail of the assignments. Somewhere along the way, I made an ever-so-slight slip and I vowed on Saturday morning that I was going to retake that lost ground.

On Sunday I sat down and worked through the homework that I still had due from Thursday. I spent over four hours on Sunday making sure I got the MVC assignments just right. I was proud of my work, because there was a point where I hit a wall, pushed harder, and persevered.

I hit Monday morning with a head of steam. And I needed it. We delved further into the strange world of MVC, passing information back and forth from our computers to the near-omniscient web servers. Tom gave us both pair exercises and individuals. I was paired with David and we worked tirelessly from 1:00, till just before 5. It was intense, but we finished.

I took a short break and sat down for the individuals at around 5:20. At this point, I had been in the TE space for over ten hours. I worked for the next two hours as person after person sighed, closed their laptop, and fished their winter coat from the rack. At 7:15, I wasn’t the last man standing, but I was close. Bleary-eyed and sore-necked, I drove home to get some sleep before it all starts again.

I’m ready to go. I’ve found a new gear.

After the lecture, Tom said offhandedly, as if no one would care, “Oh, and by the way, there’s no assignment for today. Just finish the stuff from yesterday.”

The room erupted in joy. We literally jumped out of our seats yelling–some of us sounding primal yalps of happiness, others machine-gun-questioning Tom that what he said wasn’t some joke gone terribly wrong. No assignment. No homework. For the first time in seven weeks. I might have had tears in my eyes. Maybe.

But, then again, everyone still had work to do from the day before. Like, a lot of work from the day before. We had pair exercises and individual assignments as well. Most people still had an hour to go on the pairs and almost no one had even looked at the individuals yet. I certainly hadn’t.

And, really, there was a lot still to do in our Tech Elevator day. We are not here for coding alone. After the lecture we had a showcase with a woman named Samantha, representing Bellefield Systems. She bought us a delicious lunch and then described her company to us, which makes a sophisticated time-keeping app used by some of the biggest law firms in the country. It might sound like a dry topic (and I suppose it is) but when she got into the different technologies they were working with to build their apps, she had me hooked.

Then, after the showcase, we had peer reviews of our resumes. Caitie grouped us into fives and we separated, trading resumes with our fellow students and offering critiques. I have some work to do on my resume still. We spent about forty-five minutes in our room, talking about resumes and work histories.

It was nearly three by the time we were done. We poked around with our pair code a bit, trying to make it look prettier and adding things that Tom hadn’t even asked for. But by the time we were finished, I was ready to call it a day. My individual exercise, which is due on Monday, will have to get done on the weekend.

Seven weeks in the books.

I had a fourteen-hour day planned for today. A full day of Tech Elevator, followed by driving out to Dick’s corporate headquarters for a tech talk put on by the sports life-styles retail company. A fourteen-hour Thursday after Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday were each eleven-hour days. Up at 5:30, exercised, meditated, breakfasted, and coffee’ed– I was ready.

I got to Tech Elevator at 7:15 am and worked on my resume for about half an hour. Then I messed with some code from the day before, making it work a little better before turning it in. Then I made a couple adjustments to my Book Rec App and talked a bit with Craig before class started at 9:00.

Tom has made it abundantly clear that what we’re learning now, the MVC model of making web apps, is essential to our understanding of our future jobs. We’re going to be learning about this topic for the next two weeks, but it seems like every word that comes out of Tom’s mouth is as necessary as oxygen. My focus during the three-hour lecture was intense.

After that, representatives from PNC Bank came in for what Tech Elevator calls a “showcase.” A showcase is when a company who wants to hire TE students comes to visit, buys us lunch, and pitches us on what it’s like to work at their company.

I’m already sort of sold on PNC. As it stands (and, admittedly, there’s a lot of game still to play) PNC is probably #1 on my wishlist, followed closely by Dick’s. So, suffice it to say, I paid attention closely and tried to engage with the speakers whom I will one day be interviewing with.

Then the homework.

There was both pair and individual exercises today. I was on a team of three (lucky!) but it didn’t matter. We worked on the pair exercises for four solid hours and didn’t finish. We got close, but didn’t finish.

We were supposed to leave for Dick’s at five to make the six o’clock starting time for the tech talk. As the hour ticked nearer, I became more and more concerned about finagling the CSS into its proper form, pushing my brain way past it’s comfort level. I kept pushing and pushing and pushing until my brain was mush. This isn’t the first time I’ve done this. Mush-brain has become quite common over the last two months.

I called my wife right before we were about to leave. My head was spinning with the homework, my eyes pulsing with the stress of staring closely at a screen all day, the hours and hours of focus piled to the ceiling above my skull. As my wife and I talked, I pictured my dining room table with dinner on it, my daughter playing with her Barbies, myself drinking a whiskey as we watched last night’s Survivor together as a family…

I bailed.

Sorry, guys. I’m going home. I’ll try to do the right thing tomorrow.

Today was our introduction to Asp.Net. Asp stands for Active Server Pages. It makes possible the linking together of many web pages into what one might call an application (or an “app”, if you’re in to the whole brevity thing).

It was complicated but intensely interesting. This is the missing link. The lesson that started today which we will be learning for the next three weeks joins all of the back-end logic we’ve been learning with what actually shows up on the Internet as a web page. It’s pretty exciting when I think about it that way.

The main point of our homework was to learn the workings of taking our code and translating it into a format that a user can view it. But to illustrate the point, we had some old-school logic problems, the likes of which we haven’t seen for weeks.

We were tasked with the Fibonacci Problem, a classic math problem adding a string of letters, each to the last. We first saw Fibonacci and his magical numbers in the third week of the cohort. I spent nearly four hours trying to create a loop to print out the numbers correctly and didn’t get it right until I enlisted Tom’s help.

It took me about forty-five minutes today.

What was practically impossible one month ago is a minor problem today. That’s progress.

So, as often happens in our class, Tom showed us the hard way to do something on Monday and then the easier way (supposedly) to do it on Tuesday.

Yesterday, we covered CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) which is a language used to style web pages. Yesterday we struggled through copying a web page and today we were shown methods to do it in an easier fashion: Grid and the Flexbox.

Styling is very difficult to do in HTML and I’m not totally sure why. Just to center something the way you want to can be a challenge. Some years ago, Twitter came out with a software called Bootstrap, which breaks down any web page into twelve columns allowing one to deal with the page piecemeal and have an easier time with positioning.

Grid and Flexbox are the next step in the simplification of CSS. Whereas you must (to my understanding) use twelve (or a factor of twelve) columns in BootStrap, you can set the number of columns you want to use with Grid. Grid helps you layout a whole page easier and Flexbox, it is said, makes it simpler to have like elements in the page spaced and centered in a way pleasing to the eye.

The monks of Tech Elevator did not find these two methods to be exactly as advertised.

For almost everyone in the class, it is our first day with this technology. But, to a man, we did not have much less trouble with today’s web page than we did with yesterday’s when we were “doing it the hard way.”

I suppose with time, these things will become easier. Tom said early and often that the best way to become good at CSS is to do a lot of it. Something tells me that’s about to happen whether we like it or not.