Another Project

 "Etch-A-Sketch"

The next project I got to work on was called an Etch-A-Sketch by The Odin Project (but is is more like a little drawing application). You can check it out here. It was a pretty fun project and had a few layers to work through--from allowing the user's pointer to make the "pixels" that were drawn change color to also allowing the user change how many "pixels" they get to work with. 

Abstraction

One thing that held me up for a little bit while working on this project was figuring out how to understand more abstract methods of working with the various elements in my little program. I had to figure out how to grab each individual "pixel" without being able to use the methods that I had used before. Part of this was just overthinking how some parts of my code was working. For example, JavaScript has this method called "forEach()". It cycles through each element in an Array (or node list in my case). It really is that simple, but I had a hard time believing that it was that well named or was that straightforward. Next time I'll try a handful of resources until I actually find a simple explanation (I only read the MDN page and that was not helpful for me). Overthinking can really slow you down if you get too hung up on one thing for too long.

The Road Ahead

I'm on the final stretch of The Odin Project's Foundations section. I'm looking forward to a few more projects, taking a peak into the back-end stuff, and then diving deeper into the nuts and bolts of JavaScript. I'm finding this journey interesting and rewarding. I just hope that I'll have enough practice and have built up enough skills to land a job sometime in January.
 
Tim David

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