The Developing Developer

 "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 ...

 Making A Game I've had the good fun of making a version of the classic game, "Rock, Paper, Scissors" (you can click on the link to give it a try). It's one of the projects from The Odin Project that they give you to practice on. Rock, Paper, Scissors, is one of the biggest projects I've worked on and I really enjoyed the process of putting it all together. It was fun to have the code come together to make everything work well. Rebuilding I actually made a very basic version of Rock, Paper, Scissors to start a few weeks ago. That means I was actually revisiting a project I had make before, with the challenge of making it a lot more user-friendly. I was pretty surprised to realize that I had to rewrite something like 80% to 90% of the code to make it work with a user interface (updating text, interactive buttons, etc.). It was interesting to have to re-solve a problem I had already solved--setting it up differently meant thinking about it completely differently. ...

 Open Source Something that I've come to love about the developer community is the reality of Open Source. For instance, I use Ubuntu as my primary operating system. But, I mostly love the idea that a lot of people can work together and make something amazing . Ultimately, that's what open source is--multiple people coming together, bringing their ideas and skills, and building something together that would be incredibly hard to build alone. So, I'm excited to say that I've contributed to my first Open Source project! Contribute to This Project "Contribute to This Project (GitHub)"  was the tool I used to walk me, step-by-step, through the process of adding my code to an open source project. It's a GitHub repository that allows you to add a very simple card with resources you've found helpful as a developer. If you scroll down a handful of rows (as of July 20th, 2021), you'll find my card (pictured below). It's a very simple project, but it fe...

Feedback Loop I'm really stoked that I found someone who's willing to mentor me in this journey by touching base with me once a week. In talking with my mentor, I realized that the JavaScript30  course was just a little beyond my current understanding of JavaScript. So, after my mentor looked over The Odin Project  (TOP), they recommended that I do the JavaScript Basics section of TOP's  Foundations course.  The Odin Project I'm almost 40% though the TOP's JavaScript Basics section. I'm realizing that the articles selected by TOP are very comprehensive. These articles cover a lot more ground from a lot more angles than the Udemy courses I had used to learn HTML and CSS. I believe my basic understanding of JavaScript is getting bolstered and there's plenty of projects that force me to apply my knowledge and develop my skills.   Self-Awareness The ability to have an awareness of your learning is key--especially when you're finding the resources on your ow...

 JavaScript30 I'm a couple days into the JavaScript30 course by Wes Bos. It's 30 videos of building projects with JavaScript (no libraries, just JavaScript, CSS, and HTML). I'm enjoying it so far, and I've been learning a lot. What I've been learning the most is that I am still a novice when it comes to programming languages. I've ran into multiple things in the first few day of the course where I find myself asking, "what is that line of code and how does it work?". I'll try and look up a YouTube video or two and that does not always help. I'm going to dig into the code that this challenge is using, but my main focus is to build things with JavaScript and grow in my overall knowledge over these next 30 videos. Switching it Up A majority of my learning has been happening in more structured video "classes" (i.e. Udemy courses). Now I'm coding along with somebody who is not building on small concepts one by one in that same way. I...

 It Actually Is Around four and a half hours a week. That's my rough average of the amount of time I've spent on actively learning how to code these last few weeks. Why am I telling you this? Why do you think? It's important to know how much time you spend on something. The more time you spend actively practicing and learning, the faster you will get better at that thing. Since I want to reach my goal of having a pretty good handle on programming in around the next six months, I need to put in the hours to actually learn and grow as a developer.  What That Means Practically I've started "clocking in" when I code. I do this so I actually know how much time I'm spending day-to-day and week-to-week in my developing developer journey. This can begin to create a feed-back loop for me. I also analyze the data that those hours offer me. This data can help me to know how dedicated I actually am to learning this new skill set. If I spend seven hours one week, but o...

Refocusing on The Goal I had this nagging feeling in the back of my mind that sounded something like, "iOS development is too much of a risk, you should switch back to web development to land your first job by your goal (of January 2022)." I wanted to talk to somebody to see if that though had merit or was simply an overcautious evaluation. I was able to connect with someone from my church who had taught a handful of web development bootcamps and has been working in tech for around 10 years. This was my opportunity to flesh out my doubts--would iOS be too niche or hard to break into as my first tech job? "Would you recommend trying to get my first development job in iOS or in web development?" is the question I asked my new-found friend with the inside scoop. They encouraged me to go with front-end web development for my first tech job. Here's why... Why The Switch Back to Web Development I said so long to landing that first developer job as an iOS developer for...