I do have to say that I found this a little easier than the combined HTML and CSS lessons. Somehow this was less confusing. Much of my trouble came from Codecademy’s unclear instructions.

I also wonder if there was a glitch with the program. I have no idea if other students had the same problem but for some reason when I opened some of the lessons, the code was already complete. The solution was simple, I just refreshed the code. But when you are just starting out it is a little confusing.

I also struggled with the directions at points. The exercise would say to write JavaScript but not where. As I found out, the placement of certain elements is very important. I did not find the hints helpful with this, especially since they often gave the answer instead of gentle nudges in the right direction.

Thankfully many of the codes are very similar and build on each other. I struggled with divs and how to put them together and the way they interact with the elements on the HTML page. Variables and functions though, I picked up easily. It is strange because structurally they are kind of similar.

Overall I had significantly less trouble understanding this than I thought I would. Surprisingly enough I found myself enjoying learning this language. Maybe my fear came from the way it was described in class. Or seeing the completed code in another language while I was still struggling with the first two. I’m not sure really, but I like it now that I have tried it. Will I say the same thing later this week while trying to build a photo slideshow? Will I have the same level of clarity as I do today? Watch this space in a week for my answer.

As a general rule I try not to multitask with my homework. Bad things can happen. Mistakes can be made and deadlines can be missed. This time, my decision not to do so cost me a lot of time this week.

The Codecademy courses are thorough and overall great. While doing each exercise and even after, I thought I understood the steps. I can run the new code without getting an error message or troubleshoot relatively quickly. I thought I was set. When it came time to actually write the code on my own, even for something very simple, I could barely do it without turning back to the lessons.

It did not help that Sublime did not recognize some of the code. It considered ‘px’ as incorrect code when I tried to change the font size. I also had some trouble linking my style page to the html. W3’s site and Codecademy were helpful but for some reason I could not find a solution for this.

I do like editing in Sublime though. As long as the rules are followed, they make it easy to read the code and go back and fix my mistakes. An added and non-code related bonus is that Sublime lets you change the editor’s background.

GitHub is still very much a mystery to me. I will definitely need to spend a lot of time working this on platform. I created a new repository for this project and while I was able to preview the site before I ‘saved’ it but could not after. This time GitHub and Google were my guides but I did not realize it was not showing properly until today.

Web Development will require a lot of trial, error, and Googling before I am able to get this right with, hopefully, fewer tries.

As I did the lessons, I was reminded of the many reasons I do not speak another language fluently. Grammar is a beautiful but challenging thing, especially when you just start to learn it. That is exactly what this felt like.

I started learning French years ago. For awhile I was very good at it. So good in fact that I could translate for friends and family. I could read and write easily and quickly. I even had dreams in French, as strange as that sounds. How did I become so fluent? I practiced everyday. I incorporated speaking it into every aspect of my life.

That is what I will have to do to become at least slightly proficient at HTML and eventually all of the other languages. It is actually very simple. Especially since these are the building blocks, but like with English or French grammar understanding and then remembering where to put what is the challenging for me.

I was reminded of this at the end of each lessons. I thought I had absorbed enough and remembered enough of the steps to know where each line of HTML went. But each time, I had to go back and read through the lessons again before completing the assignment. Both fortunately and unfortunately, Codecademy does not save your progress if you hit the back button at the bottom of the screen. While this was annoying, it was actually very helpful. It pushed me to go back over the lessons I apparently did not understand. It made me work just a little bit harder to understand the grammar.

Thankfully after a few tries it is coming along. I am fairly confident that I could build a basic, not so pretty web page. I am also very confident that I can break it, and hopefully then fix it again.