To fully understand the role of Iterators, you must first understand each of the elements that are supported and in direct relation to the use of Iteration in programming. Iterators are supported by collections. Collections are the objects which store a group of data members. These collections can be Arrays and Hashes which are the most common, as well as Sets, Structs, and OpenStructs, but we will not be focusing on those in this post. Iterators themselves are methods which exist in numerous coding languages. These methods are essential to returning elements of a collection one after another. The word “iterate” is a verb, meaning: “to say or do again or again and again” according to Webster’s dictionary. This basically tells us exactly what iterators do within programming as well.
I’d like to start with my synopsis on The First Mile. What began as a very daunting workload of lessons and labs, became an incredibly informative and interactive learning experience for me and I’m sure many of the other people in my cohort. I initially was worried I wouldn’t be able to complete everything on time, or I would get stuck and be unable to catch back up to the material we were discussing in the live lectures and study groups, but sure enough I made it through. To me, the First Mile represented a major obstacle I needed to hurdle in order to prove to myself I could succeed in this journey to becoming a competent coder and software engineer. It was like completing the first section of an elaborate puzzle. You see there is a much longer way to go ahead of you, but you’re proud that you were able to finish the first piece. I learned so much in terms of syntax, variables, objects, methods, and it really just gave me such a better understanding of what code does in general.
I believe to better understand my reasons for deciding to learn software engineering, I must first dissect some of the factors that influenced most of the important moments in my life.