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⛷️ ❄️ Amy Skier Coder's Blog ⛷️ ❄️
WEEK 1:
I absolutely loved my first week of coding! The key skills you
need are to be able to think in a logical and creative way, yet embrace the opportunity to be daring and
experiment and just go wild at times! This fits with my personality perfectly!
It somewhat took me back to my A-Level Days where I was good at A-Level Maths yet
had the passion for A-Level Art, and when my teachers told me that it was ok to
study both I was over the moon. But that sounds terribly boring, and I wasn't that
great at either in the end anyway. However, fast forward learning to code really
gives you that opportunity to develop your problem solving skills using both sides
of the brain, so it's fun!
I don't know how you are coping with the pandemic right now, but for me it's kind
of stressful. Learning to code has been a wonderful outlet where I can stop for a
moment, and not worry about the outside world but enjoy the journey of learning,
and absolutely love focusing on applying the logic yet can play about kind of like
on a computer game or a board game and just mess around. When you solve a problem
and it just works it's a real addrenaline! Yet other times you can spend 5 hours on a problem
and feel like you're failing and then feel so great for achieving that goal
eventually. The best times are when it's a complete fluke and you just press any
button and it just appears like magic!
During Week 1 we learned about html elements, html attributes, how to use the developer
tool and a basic coding editor. We then studied css selectors, html classes and VS code
tips. We explored css properties, css colors, css positioning, css spacing, css borders,
css pseudo selectors and default css styling. This consisted of 16 modules, with 14
challenges to complete/submit and 1 x piece of homework at the end of the week. There was
a lot to take in, and the challenges certainly kept you on your toes but I felt very
happy by the end of Week 1.
WEEK 2:
Week 2 was far more challenging, and it is pretty easy to spend hours and hours
having no idea re: why a piece of code isn't working. Whilst my enthusiasm remained high,
I really had to go over quite a few of the videos again to consolidate my learning. It felt
like the level of content had ramped up quite significantly but it was rewarding nonetheless.
This week was purely about Javascript and we learned about JS in the browser, variables, JS in HTML,
JS If statements, JS If Else statements, JS logical operators, JS functions, JS selectors, JS events
and JS refactoring. There were 12 modules and 8 challenges.
I also decided to network in a few coding groups and a software engineer at Google in Seattle
highly recommended two additional books to read - "You Don't Know JS Yet" and "JS: The Good Parts". This
will be additional reading for when I eventually get my head around all of this. I figured it would be
great to go beyond the learning that we have been given.
I think the key lesson learned from
Week 2 is that you have to practice and practice coding, it didn't come quite so naturally as I expected
during Week 1. I thought that this would be a doddle, surely it's easier than the MBA and I was really getting
the hang of it initially but it's
super challenging. I have to say that I absolutely love Matt's style though, the way he teaches the program is
fantastic - he's so enthusiastic and positive, and makes it really really fun and I feel lucky to have
found his course. If he keeps adding courses along the way, I will absolutely be a life learner of coding
with him.
WEEK 3:
The 3 modules were a reminder and summary of HTML, CSS and JS.
This gave a nice ending to the program with a few new techniques thrown in there too. While the
focus was to get the final project done I would actually like to keep this page going and simply build upon it.
I chose to incorporate a weather app to show the ability to be able to add variables and make the page
interchangable. As a passionate skier I wanted to showcase my techniques via a sport that I love - and
showcased a weather app, a mini quiz, embedded Spotify play list and a blog to simply to share the journey. I
definitely want to study the next 4 month SheCodes course but feel as though I need another week or so
to truly consolidate this module and to go and revisit my areas of weakness. I think it's key to get the foundations right, and I've
admittedly made some careless errors along the way so need to ensure I know the solution off by heart before moving forward. I will
need to spend a lot more time on this, to solve the extra buttons problem but I'm trying to figure it out myself before
resorting to google searches. My tutors have been an incredible support and so I wish to thank them for their guidance
and constant communication via Slack. This week I also networked with a contact from Aviva who gave great advice
and suggested building stuff in the public domain - by creating your own website, give a way free templates, maybe
build a wordpress template for others to use, write tutorials etc - just as a way to showcase your work. So let this be
the beginning of that journey.
