Techdegree journal – entry 2 “Keep Your Comments to Yourself!”

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Summary

As I stated before “How To Make a Website” taught by the wonderful Nick Pettit and here’s a super quick summary of what I went over today…

• Comments – Comments are reminders or visual cues in computer code that’s meant to be readable by programmers. These comments won’t be picked up by the browser and this helps others understand the code that you have written.

Thoughts and takeaways

Comments are not the most sexy subject are they? Talking about comments compared to talking about Front End design is like choosing to ride in a Ferrari F12 Berlinetta or your Grandma’s old Skoda. Not sexy. at. all.

But I realised how critical comments can be – and it’s not for other programmers but for yourself.

Making headers and placing my lines of code underneath each header helped me to understand what the heck was going on in my CSS. Writing comments forced me to actually think about what I was writing and where necessary move things to more relevant places. It felt like I was ‘spring cleaning’ my code! It also forced me to think about structure – rather than plonking random CSS selectors all over the place, I felt that having the comments made me think more ‘modularly’ (if that’s a word) and write better code.

Key takeaway

Comments may not be sexy like a Ferrari but they are necessary and I feel can help you write better code. Anyway who can afford a Ferrari anyway?!?

Please comment below!

Karlwebdev

Techdegree journal – entry 1 “How Many Div’s does it take till you get to the center honey?

Reading time: 3 mins

Introduction

As some of you may not know I’m taking the wonderful TeamTreehouse’s techdegree – which is an online course designed to give you the skills and develop the portfolio that will give you a new career in Front End Web development in 6-9 months. I have been with TeamTreehouse since July 2015 and doing it in my spare time. To use a metaphor, I liken my programming experience to a romantic relationship –  I felt like I was ‘dating’ coding – I was fooling around with it, taking each day as it comes but I still had my main squeeze which was my ‘teaching’ career. But taking the Techdegree was like putting the shiny rock on coding’s finger and saying “Front End Web Design – will you marry me?” I was ready to up my commitment and I go on to the new chapter on my life!

Summary

I am currently going over again “How To Make a Website” taught by the wonderful Nick Pettit and here’s a super quick summary of what I went over today…

• I learnt why ‘Normalize.css’ was important as it makes browsers render all elements more consistently and in line with modern standards. 
• I learnt the “wrapper div” technique – Many websites use a “wrapper div” to center the page in the middle of the site and contain the layout to a specific width. I learnt how to use auto margins and the max-width property to center our page and contain it.
• I also learnt how important it was to design sites with the ‘mobile-first’ philosophy. Nowadays more people access the Internet via mobile and portable devices than by desktops. When designing websites it’s best to start with a mobile layout and then scale up rather than the other way around.

Thoughts

Although I did this video course 10 months ago, because as part of the Techdegree there was a graded assignment that I had to hand in based on this course, I swallowed my pride decided to go through it all over again. But honestly I was amazed at 2 things that I had discovered when I returned to the video course:

1. How much I had learnt in 10 months. When I first started this video course I had never typed a word of code before in my life. It was almost like Nick was talking another language. I was as baffled as the poor shopkeeper that I was desperately trying to speak Portuguese to when I went on holiday last year. But now I had a greater grasp of what he was talking about and it was thrilling!
2. How much I had forgotten. Although it is a very basic course, there was so much advanced techniques in that video, I was scrambling to get my notebook out. It taught me that if I do not practice what I am learning, the knowledge will be like that Bob Dylan song ‘blowing in the wind’.

The most important lesson that I learnt was not to be afraid to go over material that I had thought I had learnt. Sometimes going back is the very thing that will help you go forward! (Tweet that!)

Let me know your thoughts! Leave comments below or tweet at me!

Karlwebdev

 

 

My Happiness Checklist

reading time: 2 mins

As I have been reflecting on my personal and career journey of late, I have realised that money does not automatically equate to happiness. Money gives you options but not happiness – I can only attest to my own personal experience (I will happily accept a million bucks from any of you guys! Private message me ok?). As part of my on going search for happiness, I created a small ‘checklist’ (in the loosest possible terms) of things that have brought me those positive vibes and seeing that it is #MotivationMonday, I just thought that I would share it with you guys!

Did I thank GOD today?*

Did I laugh today?

Did I send out positive energy to someone today?

Was I kind to myself today?

Did I do something that made me proud of myself today?

Did I help someone today?

Did I smile today?

Did I absorb something uplifting/inspiring today?

(*Or was I thankful today in general)

Even if I do get some crappy parts of my day, if I’ve done half of the stuff on my list, it makes he day better!

Do you guys have a ‘Happiness Checklist?’ Are there things on the list that you would take off or add?

Please share and have a great week!