My First Week at the TechNative Digital Software Development Bootcamp

Day One: Induction & Collaboration

The first day was an induction day, so a lot of it was about meeting people and setting the scene. There were learners from all different bootcamps, and it was great to see such a wide range of people all chasing new skills and new careers. We had a talk about TechNative Digital's mission. For my course specifically, they want to bridge that tricky gap between self-learning and being ready for a real job in tech. It really resonated with me, because I've done bits of self-learning before but always felt there was a missing step to make it “professional.” Afterwards, we broke off into our own bootcamp groups and talked about how the course would be structured - starting every day with a stand-up and ending with a retrospective. I liked that idea; it feels like a proper team environment rather than just a classroom.

In the afternoon, we jumped into our first group task. My little team invented “Pet-working” - a site for pet owners to share advice, connect with others, and make sure everyone knows how to look after their animals properly. We had to think about what the product was, how the website would work, and even how it might make money. Then we presented it back to the group, which was equal parts fun and nerve-wracking.

We wrapped up the day by creating our Pirate Code - basically a set of rules we all agreed to follow throughout the course. Things like there are no stupid questions, be kind, and share resources.
It felt like a nice way to set the tone: supportive, open, and collaborative.

Day Two: Strengthening HTML Foundations

Day two was when things got properly hands-on. The focus was HTML, which I thought I already had a decent handle on - but this reminded me there's always more to learn. We started off with some pair exercises. First up, we were given a recipe written out in plain text, and our job was to structure it properly as a web page. Then we did the same with a dictionary definition. Simple on the surface, but a great way to practice things like headings, ordered vs unordered lists, and making sure we were using tags that actually made sense.

Then came the bigger challenge. We were given three styled web pages and asked to build the HTML structure for each - no CSS allowed. At first, I panicked and thought we had to recreate the styling with just HTML (visions of endless <table> tags flashed before my eyes). But thankfully, it was all about structure, not presentation. That's where semantic tags really clicked for me. I had never really given them much thought, but we learnt that using them had many benefits.

For accessibility reasons, like screen readers, and also for our future learning, where we will begin reusing things more and more. <article>, <section>, and <aside> were suddenly very useful, whereas before I hadn't even heard of them. By the end of the day, I'd surprised myself. I thought I knew HTML, but turns out there's always another layer of understanding waiting to be unlocked.

Looking Ahead

So that was week one: a mix of meeting new people, building team spirit, and levelling up my coding basics. It's only been two days, but I already feel like I've learned loads. Next week is all about CSS, which I'm really looking forward to. I've used it before, but I'm hoping to really cement my knowledge and, like with HTML, discover things I didn't know I didn't know. It's early days, but if the first week is anything to go by, this is going to be a challenging, inspiring, and genuinely fun journey.