Tag: JavaScript

Learning to Code, Part 5

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2012-07-14

11:40 pm

1 Comment on Learning to Code, Part 5

Lifelong Learning, Online Education, Programming

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I just can’t stay away from CodeA­cad­e­my. I went back and fin­ished the Web Fun­da­men­tals course. I had been wait­ing because there’s JavaScript involved in the last few assign­ments, but it turns out I was able to do those with­out fin­ish­ing the JavaScript cours­es. I feel all warm and fuzzy now.

It’s good that I have that feel­ing about some­thing, because I cer­tain­ly don’t feel that way about the library book I checked out. JavaScript in Easy Steps by Mike McGrath is use­less. Yes, the steps are easy, if you just want to type. There’s almost no expla­na­tion of any­thing, so either I already know the mate­r­i­al, or I can’t learn from it. Being told, “Type this in. This is what the result will be,” with­out any source code to view (the free down­loads web site is only avail­able to peo­ple in the U.K.) and no trou­bleshoot­ing tips is sil­ly. Just a screen­shot of what the fin­ished code should look like would be a good idea, because the author’s instruc­tions aren’t always so clear, or even sequen­tial. I’m glad I did­n’t spend mon­ey for this book.

So I’ll be wait­ing for my friend’s expla­na­tion, and wish­ing all the lessons at CodeA­cad­e­my were as well-writ­ten as the ear­ly JavaScript ones.

Learning to Code, Part 2

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2012-07-09

7:14 pm

1 Comment on Learning to Code, Part 2

Lifelong Learning, Online Education, Programming

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I’m still explor­ing CodeA­cad­e­my, which has proven to be a very inter­est­ing site.

I made it through their JavaScript Fun­da­men­tals and found that I want­ed to know more, so I start­ed on their Code Year project, which picks up right after that with JavaScript Con­di­tion­als. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, I seem to have hit a bug­gy les­son on the third sec­tion of that area and am wait­ing for a response from their peo­ple as to why my code is work­ing and return­ing a cor­rect answer but their auto­mat­ed sys­tem still says, “Oops! Try again.” From their Q&A forum, it seems that quite a few peo­ple have had trou­ble with that lesson.

So I decid­ed to regroup and see what else they offer. I men­tioned in the ear­li­er post that I need­ed to update my HTML skills, so I moved on to that part of the site. I cer­tain­ly learned to cre­ate web pages before CSS days, so I need­ed to learn a lot more about that, too, and I am. I’ve got­ten through the HTML por­tion and the first CSS sec­tion, and I don’t see any of that as wast­ed time.

At this point I would hap­pi­ly rec­om­mend CodeA­cad­e­my to any­one who wants to learn the basics of cre­at­ing a web site. I feel that I’m learn­ing the basics of pro­gram­ming, but I’m not far enough along to opine about that bit yet. We’ll see whether or not that issue is resolved in a time­ly man­ner, first.

There are cer­tain­ly oth­er alter­na­tives, but that’s what I’ve learned in the last 24 hours.

Sleepy!

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2008-08-13

11:36 pm

2 Comments on Sleepy!

Family, Geekery, Health, Reading

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I did­n’t sleep very well last night, although I man­aged to stay up all day yes­ter­day (unusu­al late­ly). Unfor­tu­nate­ly, I end­ed up sleep­ing most of the day, today, and I’m still sleepy! So I hope I can sleep well again, tonight.

I have a fever, too, so appar­ent­ly push­ing myself to not nap was a bad idea. Doc­tor’s orders are still to lay down 15 min­utes of every hour, which makes it dif­fi­cult to get much done at a time. Oh well. It’s bet­ter than a fever.

The girl got home safe­ly, but did­n’t go out with her friends tonight as planned due to a threat­en­ing migraine. They did­n’t real­ly see much of the mete­or show­er, because the skies were too cloudy, but they did have fun.

I fin­ished read­ing the sec­ond of Kat Richard­son’s Grey­walk­er books today, Pol­ter­geist. Very good stuff, and a nice change from some of the too-com­mon urban fan­ta­sy themes. The library is hold­ing Under­ground for me, which I hope to pick up tomorrow.

The mail brought an O’Reil­ly JavaScript book to review for TCM, so I’ll be work­ing on that dur­ing my more coher­ent wak­ing hours for a bit.