*This post was originally posted Jan 20th 2024 , read more about that here.
This year I have been putting my focus and goals on learning to code, I have attempted in the past few years but it would always fall short and not be a priority. This year I am changing that and putting it at top priority.
My previous attempts in the 3 past years I would loose focus and the drive to even want to do it. Depression had a large hand in that and procrastination as well , both of those together are a very bad combination. I still struggle with both but I found that learning something outside of work has a good effect on my depression and gives me the drive, and willpower to continue and want to learn more.
I have started back on freecodecamp.org and it has been a world of difference compared to when I tried previously in Aug. 2021. The starting courses are better structured as compared to before and the tools work better now as well. I have made it much further than my previous attempts so that makes me happy and very optimistic about what I can do.
It the curriculum starts out with Responsive Web Design which it recommends going in order with. The courses are structured out in about 60 parts in each which does a good job of showing you how things are laid out and not straight to creating html boilerplate from part 1 and rather explain each tag and function. The editor is decent too and doesn't do allot of auto input for you which is good as I need to learn the muscle memory of it all as I go along. It does not give you to many hints and does not give you the answer which I like, it encourages you to look for resources that would lead to the answer or reach out to peers in the forums for help. This is how I find the answers in my job and is a great way of learning rather than being handed the answer. I found myself using w3schools for my go to resource the most, I would recommend bookmarking as I can see it being very handy in a "guidebook" of how html and css works.
I remember trying to learn html back in the late 90's before html5 was a thing, at the time I thought it was very clunky and really relied on allot of other content to put a page together. I ended up not getting very far at the time , I was self teaching myself with a O'Reilly html book and it was not helping. I was slightly worried going in again that html would be that painful again but was pleasantly surprised it was not and how easy it was compared to pre html5.
The next 2 courses are more CSS related, I am about half way through the 2nd course and really enjoying it. I am amazed at how much you can actually do and manipulate the page with, it really is a bulk of what a page is today. I enjoy the way css works compared to html but it has allot more variables to remember and the values they use.
With that said when I first wrote this post before changing to this platform I set myself a goal of by the end of the year making some sort of app with my skills. I still don't think that is far fetched as an app can be allot these days, from a web app, to a cli related app to many things. I'm not setting my goal to building some large or complex anything but just some sort of app by the end of the year.
I will continue to journal my journey here even though I may just be speaking out into the void sometimes, it still feels good to write and feels good to share.
Next post will be my post that was originally posted on Feb 1st 2024.