In spring 2020, with time in my hands, I decided to try and give my WordPress Business Webpage a complete overhaul, both in design and content: smooth-tours.com. It was my first contact ever with code.
I got curious, and in summer 2020 I started teaching myself. A month later, I had managed to get some structure, and settled mostly on two open source free resources: freeCodeCamp.org and The Odin Project. With sporadic jumps to and tons of help from MDN web docs and w3schools. I was hooked.
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HTML & CSS (August / September 2020)
- A tribute page
- A survey form
- A business landing page // this is a rough copy of my WordPress Business Page
- A technical documentation page
- A personal portfolio
- A product landing page // this is a shortened copy (with minor variations) of the iPhone landing page, freely chosen to practice flexbox and grids.
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JAVASCRIPT (September 2020)
After dipping a toe with JS, in fall I went back-end. Ruby is being a different dimension, I'm quite struggling with the abstraction. I notice I'm developing a quite interesting stubborn streak. The web is being again an incredible help. StackOverflow and Jesus Castello's RubyGuides jump to my mind, but there is a ton of others. Again, the folks at The Odin Project and all the other Vikings around are utterly amazing!
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RUBY (October / November / December 2020)
Besides that, I am following the Ruby Track at Exercism and doing daily algorithms at Edabit
My next project was Harvard's CS50's Introduction to Computer Science course, which I loved. It turned out that without the knowledge I had acquired over the last few months, I wouldn't have had a chance at it.
Finishing the part on C was a highlight (phew), and then I had to give Python a chance. It's definitely not been love at first sight: I do miss Ruby... But SQL was intuitive, and Django gave me finally the connection between front and back end.
So I kept going,on one hand doing introductory courses to get a grip on basic computer concepts, on the other with Harvard's CS50 Web Programming with Python and JavaScript... None my favoutite language, but that's how much I enjoy these courses.
I have reached the end of CS50 Web Programming. I haven't submitted my final project yet, and I won't right now. I am again feeling overwhelmed, and I have the feeling I have to search absolutely every tiny step I want to make, which is being kind of frustrating. The turning point has been, once again, Exercism. I started the Python track only to realize I have no clue about the language, and when I found myself googling how to iterate over a list of tuples I decided this had to change. So I am giving a go to Andrei Neagoie's Complete Python Developer in 2021: Zero to Mastery a chance. The idea is to spend some time with Python, then with Django, then with React?