CSS, Why So Time Consuming?

 A Restaurant Page

I just wrapped up my latest project: a simple website for a (made up) restaurant. The major things that consumed my time included wrapping my head around how to use webpack, remembering how to set up CSS for successful styling, and trying to isolate the different pages and elements. I enjoyed putting this project together, but I was a little discouraged by how long it took to complete the project. I worked on this project from the 15th to the 22nd of this month. I'm recognizing just how complex these projects can actually be an it's hard to recognize that doing well on the projects is part of why I'm behind on my goal of wrapping up this Odin Project JavaScript Course come January.

Remembering Why CSS Can Drive Me Crazy

A big sink hole of my time was remembering some CSS basics. I was having the worst time getting all my elements to center on the webpage. This led to an hour or more of trying everything I could think of, before remembering the simple principle that you make an HTML div element, place you content into a child div element inside the parent div, and apply the styles to the parent div element. Once I set up my styles to manipulate the page in that way, everything clicked into place and it even got rid of my terrible overflow problem. I had forgotten just how time consuming it can be to get CSS just right.

An Honest Assessment

I'm in a place where I'm trying to figure out if I can complete The Odin Project's JavaScript Course by the time 2022 hits us full force. Thankfully, there are a lot of sections of learning up ahead that do not have as many projects interspersed between the articles and simple practice problems. I'm hoping to gain more ground in that section and get closer to my ideal time line. I'm also trying to make peace with myself that projects do take a long time and that I may not get through all the material come January. We'll just have to see how these next two weeks pan out and I think that will help me reset to a more realistic time line.


Tim David

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