The Festival Gardens

An introspective little bit about one of my favourite parks in Liverpool.

I would like to say a little bit about my journey into Product. And, the inspiration for today's blog post, actually plays quite a huge role in this. I don't know where the story starts. I guess it starts back in 2018 when I went to do my first MSc in Marine Spatial Planning. I went to Liverpool but I couldn't really get out too much. So while I explored a lot of Sefton Park (which I will write about in a future blog post), I never made it to the Festival Gardens. (By the way, they have a rich history of having been built to attract tourism/please investors but this is not my area of expertise).

A year later, in 2019, I went to do MSc number 2 at Manchester. I made some international friends and they wanted to see Liverpool. I hadn't been back so I agreed to join them and be their tour guide for most of the trip. 

A part of it included a coach tour around Liverpool - and they took us past Penny Lane, Sefton Park - and then - wow, what was this? 

They took us past the Festival Gardens and I felt something so beautiful, so healing, so alive. I actually went to visit them in March 2021, I remember now - but I quickly left to go back to Sefton Park because I had come specially to visit there. I wasn't ready for the newness of this space yet.

Fast forward to June 2022. I had decided to apply for every internal role that came up that I felt able to do. The first to come up was a Product Specialist role. No-one will ever know how hard I worked for that role. I worked with mentors and bosses to understand the application. I spent my birthday weekend writing that first draft. I spent my birthday in the office 'til 11 pm finalising my application because the deadline was the next day. 

End of June, I got the interview. I had my interview up in London on the 30th of June and then I travelled up North to spend my birthday weekend (just like the year before) in Manchester and Liverpool. I spent the whole of the 1st of July in the Festival Gardens. 

And all I could think about was this job and how I wanted it so so badly. 

I sat underneath the roof pictured below (which has beautiful paintings everywhere - and this is my own photo from July YAYYY) and tried not to think about it but I just thought and thought about it. Spoiler alert I got the job. And that job turned out to be my gateway into everything. I didn't know how much was at stake and I'm so glad that I didn't. 

If I had known how much my new job would lead me into my future as a (hopefully) Software Engineer then I don't think I would've been able to believe it 💖

P.S. I got strangely knackered at the end of this day. So apologies if any of the points seem brief... We can look at them as 'purposefully concise' lol. 

Reflecting on Yesterday's Webinar Again 💖🤗

Having had an evening to reflect on things I now realise that one of the most interesting things that was said was this: the Web Developer presenting had been a Front-End Dev for 14 years. And he said: he didn't even know 10% of JavaScript. Wow! This shocked me. This blew my mind. Can there really be that much JavaScript to learn? Who even writes all of this stuff? Who has time (that is, to produce it)?

It also made me ask the question: how much JavaScript will I be able to learn in my life? 

Because I really love it. But I also had a talk with Adam before Christmas on the need to be efficient vs. the desire to know everything. 

It's building the tool that matters, right? And if you use React and so learn less JS but the app is built then that's what really matters isn't it?

Speaking of JavaScript I had a really amazing catch-up with Rosana today.

Questions with Rosana

Rosana very very kindly and generously offered me their time today to go over some of my JavaScript questions. Although it normally takes me a day or 2 to process my conversations, here are some of my first thoughts. 

Firstly, we talked about brackets in JavaScript functions (just like the normal ones () ). We established that in functions these are the place to put parameters into. What happens if there are no parameters, though? I guess they are just left empty? Which begs the question:

• Can we have a function without parameters? 

I swear I thought we could. We also looked a bit at arrow functions - Rosana showed me the MDN documentation for this which I hope to drawn on along with my Codecademy course and the Codecademy cheat sheet. We said that maybe another time we would look at why in certain situations you may need to use a certain type of function above others.

Two Example Functions 

I wanted to come up with two examples of functions written as function declarations, arrow functions, and function expressions. This may have to be a tomorrow thing. Along with:

• Reading over Rosana's example code with callbacks and functions as parameters
• CARRYING ON WITH THOSE ARROW FUNCTIONS

Lots to do then I guess! I'm busyyy. 💓

Tools 

I have had a lot of input from a lot of my colleagues on the tools that I am using. 

Rosana has recommended that I do lots of small tests on Codepen in order to receive instant feedback on my coding questions, i.e. "Does this even work?".

This is in addition to writing things out on the blog.

Branching 

Git and the Sims

Rosana and I have been chatting about Git and branching today. 

I didn't really understand branching very much. So they explained it to me (just like Artur did the other day 💗) in terms of my favourite games - The Sims!!!

Imagine I am playing a game with a Sim called Lina. I have just made Lina reach adulthood and now I have several choices. Lina could go to Sim University to study Physics - or she could become an Entertainer (Musician/Comedian) - or she could get married to one of those rich Sims down the road and stay at home and have kids. So the game which is my main saved game is my main branch.

So lets say I play out all of these three scenarios. And then I quite like the one where she has children actually. But now the kids are at school and I want to get her some work - so should she be a programmer, a dancer, or a politician? Well maybe I play out all three and I hate all three scenarios. Lina would make a good lawyer. So I go back to the moment when she decided to go back to work (which I have saved) and I continue from there. Does that make sense? I am only just all following it myself. 

The one thing that I am still confused about is the terminology. What is a branch, what is a master branch, etc. Wait a minute - isn't it everything I have just said?

They also recommended that I check out Sourcetree as a more UI friendly way of learning Git and they linked me to a couple of tutorials (but we will also come back to this later - thanks Rosana!!!!! - thanks!). 💞

Callbacks

And using functions as parameters

Okay so I have to admit, I have run out of energy for this today. 

But Rosana went through a really amazing example with me on 

a) Callbacks and 

b) Using functions as parameters. 

They saved it on Codepen for me! 

I will go back over it tomorrow or the day after - whenever I have time. And I just need to get back to those arrow functions...