Week 11 (04.03 to 04.09)

At the end of last week, I managed to finish section 23 of the Udemy bootcamp and basically get back to where I finished off the first time I went through it. From now on, it’s only new material and I’m really excited due to the fact that I’m going to learn how HTML, CSS and JS interact within a web page/app.

I’m still thinking deeply about my learning strategy, and I think I’m not giving up with other resources but still prioritizing Udemy.

This week has been challenging however, not particularly regarding education, but health. In Japan right now, it’s the Sakura season, with beautiful cherry blossoms in full bloom and people organizing Hanami, spending time and having fun while enjoying beautiful sights. But cherry blossoms means spring season is coming, and allergies are in full force too. I’ve got such a terrible hay fever for the past 3-4 weeks, and adding to that, I also got the influenza. Needless to say, even though I tried moving forward with my learning, I couldn’t focus at all, it was so tough getting started.

After so much struggle, eventually I got better, and I’m ready to tackle my learning next week.

Week 12 (04.10 to 04.16)

This week, I’m trying to get back on track with my learning. It’s true that I fell behind by quite a lot these past few weeks. However, I feel like distancing myself for some time is actually productive as I feel more motivated and energized before tackling learning sessions. To make my learning as easy as possible, I still use Pomodoro and it’s still as effective as when I started using it.

At the beginning of the week, I resumed my learning on Udemy and actually went through sections 24 and 25 much faster than I expected. It’s all about the DOM (Document Object Model), and literally using JavaScript to interact with HTML content. I find it definitely more enjoyable than the theoretical JS lessons from previous sections since I can make web pages interactive from now on.

Being able to make a UI (or front-end I guess in the Web Dev jargon) interactive makes my learning really interesting! I actually made this week’s goal to finish sections 24 and 25, but I’m currently at section 27 learning about Async JavaScript.

What I enjoyed was the little project, a Ping Pong Score Keeper that looks really good. I tried to do the project on my own and actually managed to code the logic by myself to some extent. I refactored it and was satisfied with my solution, but the instructor’s refactoring was, I admit, more efficient. So I still have a lot to learn and need to think a bit differently. It’s all a learning experience! No shame in that!

Even though it’s taken from a course, I will probably make a GitHub repo out of it so I can show it and have a trace of my progress.

Now I’m trying to move forward with The Odin Project that I put aside, because what I’ve learned until now with Udemy, I’m tackling similar topics on TOP as well. I went through the Rock, Paper, Scissors project which was quite interesting. It’s only JavaScript based right now, but I managed to get the logic going, and very satisfied with my solution! Hopefully, as it’s going to be revisited in the future I’ll be able to make a more visually appealing solution!

In the meantime, besides Web Development, I thought of creating my own C app to track tennis scores, very similar to the Ping Pong Score Keeper. The logic is very different, but as I’m writing it in C, it’s good practice as well. I’d like to be able to make a GUI too so it’s convenient to use. Probably in the future, make it a smartphone app as well? Depending on time, energy and commitment because, still, web development is my priority as of now.

On Saturday, I made an enormous progress on the Udemy course, where I completed the section about Async Javascript, which was not as complicated as I thought, but I believe I need more experience in projects to truly understand how it works in real-life situations. In the same vein, I completed section 28 with AJAX and Axios, learning how to make requests and gather data from APIs, learning about the JSON format that I’ve seen very often.

I skipped section 29 about OOP, prototypes and classes, but I’m coming back to it later, as I wanted to get to less dry sections, and I’m glad I did. I started learning about Node.js and the different modules. I also went through the Mastering The Terminal section quite quickly as this is a tool I use on a daily basis.

All in all, tremendous progress that I’m proud of this week, as I’m getting into more concrete and interesting sections, and getting closer to starting the big project of this Udemy bootcamp. Although I progressed on The Odin Project and FreeCodeCamp, I’m looking forward to starting this great project from the Udemy course.

With all the knowledge I accumulated so far on the latter, I can confidently tackle the few projects on The Odin Project as well. I’m still on the Responsive Design section on FreeCodeCamp that I believe I’ll finish soon, I just need to put some time in.

I think this week has been the most productive in a while due to my regained interest and more interesting content. I’m looking forward to the following weeks when I’m going to tackle some back-end stuff!!