What did I learn and build this month?/CSS tutorials I've used - Day 28

[ESCHENX]

Started to self-taught front-end coding almost a month ago.
Pretty much just HTML, CSS so far. I will start to learn JavaScript and meanwhile finish reading the book CSS Mastery by Andy Budd.

(BTW why people use the term 'self-taught'? I mean, you are always learning, it's not like you have already finished the learning journey thus it became past tense... I think we should use the term 'self-learning' lol. Life is long and we are always learnING, never stop until one day you physically couldn't)

So far I built a simple page with CodePen (for my badminton club Majestic and a portfolio page published here on Github.

I will list a few websites I used that provide free tutorials below:

1. freeCodeCamp
   It's great. For beginners. It shows you what is code and how it reacts (simultaneously) and what we can do with it. It gives me confidence. (As one of the biggest problem beginners have is self-doubt)

Through freeCodeCamp I learnt basic HTML and CSS and got to know got to know CocdPen where I built my first 3 projects.

Two things about freeCodeCamp tutorial that I was not happy about:

• I did not know some CSS they taught me was a part of Bootstrap. Until later days when I was building simple webpage myself and some code (bootstrap grid system) doesn't work then I did some research and realized, "darn it, it is part of Bootstrap!"
  If I want to use it, I have to link to them via CDN or install and include in my HTML file.

• Another thing is, they introduce new language too quick. I remember I just got to know some CSS code and they already include some simple JavaScript code in the tutorials. In other words, it doesn't cover a language deeply which is understandable.

In conclusion: freeCodeCamp is good for beginners to get to know code but if you want to learn thoroughly it is not sufficient.

They do have many coders post in their blog section which I highly recommend. It is called Medium.

2. Codepen

I got to know CodePen through freeCodeCamp and built my first 3 web pages. CodePen allows you to write HTML, CSS and Javascript on the same page you don't have to jump between documents. They also have many people sharing their cool tricks which you can 'fork' and study.

But after I picked a better offline text editor Brackets http://brackets.io/ I found myself barely use CodePen to build projects. I may, in the future use them to share some cool tricks (if I got any lol) and graphic design purely based on CSS.

3. W3schools

It seems many people don't like it. But I quite do. It's good for getting to know basic knowledge. I spent maybe 2-3 weeks go through their HTML and CSS tutorials and quizzes. And made some notes along the time. I found myself going back to w3schools quite often to recap some knowledge when problems occur during coding practice. I also use some of their tools often like colour picker and web safe font etc.

In conclusion, w3schools is good for going through HTML and CSS systematically. (I have not started to learn JavaScript from them yet cannot give any insight)

4. CodeCademy

I have not spent too much time with CodeCademy yet. It did not leave me a good first impression when I first come across it, to be honest. I found it difficult to find free tutorials and the online video course they are selling are quite "in-you-face". I understand they need to make profit by selling more courses but it's too much, in my standard anyway.

I did spend one or two nights learning JavaScript with them so far, pretty ordinary. (I will look into how do other people learn JavaScript soon and I probably will choose between w3schools and codecademy if I couldn't find a better choice)