Learning by Doing



So far there hasn't been a topic we didn't, as a class, just jump in to. While at least half of the class has previous experience with HTML and CSS the rest of us were immediately staring at a blank text editor wondering how to start 'just coding'. By the time the day ended I had a web page that looked decent but I had fumbled through the entire activity and it took me twice as long as most others. But I did it. Not to toot my own horn but it looked great too! I had done that. Sure, I had collaborated to see what the proper commands were for some things and googled how to make a rounded corner but I had still been the one to physically type everything. Next time the same project might take me half the amount of time because I won't spend an hour figuring out whether to add margins in percentages or pixels.

I have a list in my notebook of broad ideas that I would love to go back over when the class is finished. There are some proper procedures and 'etiquette' that is being glazed over (thankfully) for the benefit of just letting us as students work with the code without over thinking it more than we already are. It's just like any other mastery like woodworking or karate - you can't read about it to get good at it. You have to start, fail, google, keep going, fail, keep going. I have skipped over plenty of steps to come back to. Sure enough, by the time I return to them I'm much more familiar with what questions to ask and how to find what doesn't work in order to eliminate some choices.

This example is just a piece of CSS we had to build to match a given mockup. Believe it or not, this little bit of code (and a few additional lines) that I wrote linked to HTML that was provided created this stunning header:



I've decided that as I'm going along over the next few months I will not only blog about my experience but try to work on a personal project as well to manipulate during lessons after class. By the end of the course I would love to have a functional website for my photography. Just a gallery. Nothing too fancy. At Day Four I already have enough confidence to know that I can do the sketching and wireframing for that project. To know that those two tasks are a job within themselves is extremely exhilarating! Even with a ton of more work to go I am already a 'techie'!

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