From Craft to Code

As we've progressed further into React I am relearning how to accomplish some tasks that I knew how to do in Node but is done a bit differently now. For example, routing is not a new concept and is something I have done before in previous projects but React handles routes a little differently than Node. Fortunately, both are Javascript so nothing is radically different. Inside of the index.js file I've placed this BrowserRouter which I imported at the top of the page. I then used the syntax I found from the documentation to make a list of endpoints I wanted. The most simple route, the root path, on the bottom to allow the file to read every preceding path as well. The first path here is a dynamic route meaning the :id can change but still render the same layout. I've accomplished all of this before but I did get quite stuck on figuring out where to put my code in React. After enough trial and error I finally moved it into the right spot, linked the component files, a...

Never have I ever put so much thought into how a calculator works. Our weekly assignment, due this upcoming Friday, is to create a static webpage that will display a green calculator that not just looks pretty but functions correctly. The looking pretty is HTML and CSS which we covered a grand total of two weeks ago and I'm already feeling rusty on. The functionality is all JavaScript. I seriously can't believe that in three weeks I'm already familiar with and using (kind of awkwardly) these three languages. In about five hours time I accomplished all of the above. I have green buttons that when pushed are displayed in the empty field at the top of the page as well as can mathematically work (as long as the operation is simple and done one step at a time). For now my GitHub link is  https://github.com/victoriarainc/week-03-project  but I will update later this week with the actual page so you can interact with my code! Yay progress! All in all I'm super proud but...

This week has been the week of a Tuesday holiday; both incredibly short and surprisingly long! I've been consistently on top of my work out of habit, thankfully, but I'm ready for material that I feel solid on. I guess in a way I should embrace this uncomfortable feeling that I don't understand what I'm doing as technology itself is never just one thing and constantly evolves. As we get more into JavaScript I will be excited to see how to actually use it in my HTML and CSS. So far we've mostly covered concepts like truthy/falsey, if statements, if/else statements, and pushing to git pages. Compared to last week it feels like we barely covered anything but I'm happy to take this step by step now. The weekly project was a challenge but I knew myself well enough to space out the web page one piece at a time. All of the concepts I thought would be difficult, like parallax and favicon, were unbelievably easy. Yet I still feel shaky on when to use flex and when to u...

Now that we're in Week 2 we've gotten into a more secure, more custom routine that fits our cohort's needs. Rather than jumping into new material every day we have an opportunity in the morning to both go over the previous day's activity and to bring up any questions we had about the reading material for today's lesson. I've also had the opportunity to confront my learning curves: the first week I was learning SO much more than just the given material. I was not only grasping the first concepts of git, pushing to github, basic html, and css but also how to use a mac, what shortcuts I have available, how to work in the command line, how to learn in the flipped classroom model, AND generic programming vocabulary that doesn't actually line up very well with English definitions of the same words. We've been given a week assignment to turn in by this Friday but I went ahead and jumped into it over the weekend. I've only worked on one page so far but I f...

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 'etiquett...