Something like a break

well i went on vacation for a couple of weeks, got sick when i got back, and then started some work that made me exhausted and ive fallen off a bit but also watched some inspiring youtube videos and have listened to 1.25 podcasts. 

so i've printed out the developer roadmap, upon recommendation of someone at the code mentorship meetup, and the printout is on my wall.  hopefully if i see it every day i will start to think about things i can do to help move this along.

Reddit Post about self-taught CS

https://teachyourselfcs.com/

This website looks pretty useful!

Also a few youtube series:

Crash Course CS
CS50
ComputerPhile
Tom Scott's the basics
https://www.khanacademy.org/computing/computer-science

 Read Code by Charles Petzold. It's a CS degree wrapped in language people can actually understand.

 https://www.youtube.com/user/mycodeschool

Coding Bat

OK, cool.  Some more stuff to look at when I get the moxy.

A brief update

I went to a meetup call Austin Coding Mentorship.

People there were really helpful!

I saw people offering to help people get jobs, there were lots of encouraging words, and people seemed to be learning.

I was impressed and will go again.


I also went to free code camp this week, and did some coding practice there, although it never feels like quite enough.

I'm trying to keep up with javascript by using an app on my phone.  Studying on my phone means I can use my bus time efficiently.

Also, I read a guide to bootcamps.  I've been interested in going to one, and this guide came up in my freecodecamp email.  It was full of good information, but the summary at the end was good.

Three important things:

1. Your skills
2. Your reputation
3. Your network

I need to make a plan to work on these three things.

Joined the Free Code Camp Forum

Like the title says, I joined the Free Code Camp forum today.

I did some interaction with the discobot.  We sent messages back and forth, and the messages usually involved a task that I needed to complete, which led to another message.  I think there were about 15 messages total.  It was relatively engaging.  More doing than reading.

I think this kind of thing would be wonderful for language learning.  Sort of like a MUD, but smaller and maybe a bit more discrete, so that it would be forgiving of bad grammar or misspellings, etc.

Stumbling Around

https://learn.freecodecamp.org/javascript-algorithms-and-data-structures/es6/use-destructuring-assignment-to-assign-variables-from-objects

I really had trouble with this one.  I basically had to join the forum and find the code.

I don't understand how destructuring something that doesn't exist is possible.  Maybe that isn't what is happening.

Hopefully this can be one of those posts that I look back on in awhile and realize how far I've come.

My two month break

I took something like a two month break from learning to code.  I was making money doing other things, and those things left me pretty tired.  They were distractions from coding, and honestly I think coding doesn't have my full attention.  I'm going to try to slam it in by hitting on more cylinders.  I'll be doing more than freecodecamp.. I'll work a bit more with Odin, and I've also found a few other resources.  Sololearn for my phone, that will help when all I can do is lay down, but I'll still be able to study. 

I'm thinking of setting a daily timer for my coding adventures.  This will be something like what I do with language learning.  Maybe keeping a written diary will help, too.  Something about this format is hindering me from keeping things collated, which is the whole point of this blog.  Sometimes I also feel like I can't really brainstorm when I write something that I'm going to post on the internet.  It feels incorrect, perhaps unprofessional, perhaps inappropriate.

But also it isn't all that coding is negative.  There are a lot of interesting things going on in my life that I have enjoyed doing, and they are worthy of my time.  I just need to get into a new chapter, and I hope coding can get me there.

Transpilers

https://scotch.io/tutorials/javascript-transpilers-what-they-are-why-we-need-them

lots of things you'd need to know about transpilers.  they change one language into another, say js 5 to js 6.  or something.  i don't know, read that article