This week, I appreciate that our work was broken down into a small increment that was more manageable for me to work through and digest between last week’s class and this week. That being said, I definitely struggled with keeping all of the concepts straight, and I definitely took comfort in the fact that my fellow classmates had difficulty with some parts of the lessons as well.

One thing that confused me, and that I think Codecademy did not do a good job explaining, was some of the small pieces of syntax that got overlooked. Most specifically I believe this case was demonstrated when the syntax switched from regular parentheses to square brackets when writing out arrays — something I didn’t catch initially but only noticed when I worked through the problem for long enough. Things like this are very minute, but obviously make a difference when writing code. I also thought that the amount of knowledge (most specifically lumping in jQuery and JavaScript together) was a lot to comprehend. Even though it makes a lot of sense to learn those two language together, it was very hard for me to digest JavaScript and then jump right into jQuery — a language I don’t think was explained all that well.

One question that I had was about the explanation in Codecademy about generating a random card by using the Math.random and Math.floor functions. I wasn’t sure why you would multiply that function by 4, and where exactly that number and matching “card” came into play. Hopefully Greg will be able to shed some light on this, or hopefully walk us through this example and explain where the multiplication comes into play.

Overall I am looking forward to working through a couple of examples, similar to how we walked through the photo gallery last week, so that the overall structure of some of the jQuery concepts can be explained, and how that integration process works.

This week we learned about various CSS elements that help us provide very specific design elements that jazz up our web pages. As we went through each long assignment, I loved how detailed CSS allowed you to be in designing your web page — down to the position on the page, font size and color, and more. However, I did find it difficult to fully digest and be able to reproduce so much CSS information all at once — in our prototype webpage assignment I felt as if I needed to go back and check how to execute every single command that I wanted on my page. I also definitely understood how difficult it could be to construct detailed websites with lots of different style elements across different pages – I can’t even imagine how much time and energy that must take! As much as I enjoyed being able to manipulate my page in this way, I did find it challenging to try and go back and remember the various HTML commands we learned in the previous week, to make both parts of our web site fit together seamlessly. Personally, I don’t think we spent enough time getting comfortable with the HTML language before moving right along to CSS, though I’m sure we will revisit it a lot throughout the rest of the semester.

In our readings, I really enjoyed reading the “Responsive Web Design” narrative on AListApart.com. Though it took me some time to read through (mostly because I wanted to try and absorb as much of it as possible, and therefore took the time to remind myself about specific verbiage), I liked that the author walked the reader through writing out each component, how that changed the architecture of the website, and the changes in overall responsiveness to the site as well – a subject I feel as though we have not touched on much yet.

As I completed the first two assignments on CodeAcademy, I couldn’t help but be super grateful for the detailed instructions that Codecademy gave as it walked me through each piece of the lesson. I found that the first lesson made a lot of sense and I was able to pick up the concept and general structure of an HTML code quickly, but I struggled more on the second lesson and putting even more specific concepts together. I was able to work through most of them, but I definitely wondered how I would memorize and make sure to not miss tiny details that are required for clean, workable code.

The GitHub activity was simple but confused me, as I wasn’t sure how this fit in with our HTML learning – I am assuming that repositories will be where we place our code once we start writing it, but there was less explanation and hand-holding in this exercise compared to the Codecademy assignments. Following the instructions was very difficult for me, and I hope that in this week’s class we will go over the importance of this program, how it fits in with our programming knowledge, and walking us through repositories and how we will be using the pull/merge requests throughout the semester. I’m also not totally sure if I submitted the right GitHub repo test, but I have included the link below. The GitHub guide link that was provided as reading for homework this week was somewhat helpful, but I think it would be even more beneficial to hear this part of our curriculum explained in person — especially how it will be incorporated into our learning this semester. Hoping for a lot more clarity on this topic in the coming week, and looking forward to diving further into our Codecademy assignment and analyzing each piece that we have learned so far!

GitHub test: readme-edits/readme-edits

Codecademy Profile: https://www.codecademy.com/lucynegash

Reading through the Week 0 assignments was fascinating and really opened my eyes up to the inner workings of the Internet – something I definitely don’t think about on a regular basis, and definitely take advantage of. I especially liked the YouTube video about How the Internet works. Though it was quite simplistic, it gave a good overall view of how we actually receive and send information via the Internet.

As I continued to read through our assignments, particularly the Timeline of Software Languages, I was stunned to see how many I didn’t recognize, as well as when their birthplace happened during the 20th century. It amazed me to see how the beginnings of modern computer technology really stemmed from previous decades of new math and science. I did notice how my curiosity was peaked during many of the sections, so much so that I found myself Googling additional information to learn more about a particular subject or vocabulary term, or even looking for other explanations to help me learn the concept better.

My favorite article we were assigned to read was the Pragmatic Programmer’s Quick Reference Guide. Even though I didn’t quite understand what each of the tenets we’re referencing, it helped me frame what we would be learning in our first class, and definitely emphasized the fact that coding and website design was very precise, clean, and detail-oriented. Code could not be sloppy or hard to follow, which would then make correcting edits and fine-tuning different design pieces easier. I’m sure this will make more sense to me in the future as we learn more and more about the various coding languages and etiquette, but I think this article did the best for preparing my thinking for the first class to come.

I definitely felt overwhelmed about our assignments to come and the pace at which we would be learning and completing them, but I was hopeful and optimistic that I would be able to pick up the pace with the help of my fellow students, and of course Google. 

GitHub link:  https://github.com/lucynegash