Blog Index

I started the #100DaysOfCode challenge a little over a week ago. It has been going really well, and I have been coding for an average of 1-2 hours per day. I have been making great progress on the front-end projects with Free Code Camp, having completed the Pomodoro Timer and started the Tic Tac Toe game. At the current rate of completing projects I may finish the last two projects ahead of my October 1st mental deadline. What I would like to do on these check in posts is identify some of the accomplishments and challenges I faced as well as any moments of reflective inspiration. Accomplishments: Through building the Pomodoro timer I solidified my understanding of the React framework, how to structure things, when lifecycle hooks would be…

I completed my second project in React last Friday after about 12 hours of development in the course of 5 days. The Pomodoro timer is the second of the four advanced front end certification projects in Free Code Camp's program. I'm getting more excited as I near the end of this particular challenge. The live version of my Pomodoro timer can be found here and the code can be found on Github. I decided to build this project in React to help solidify my fledgling knowledge in the framework, and because I thought that the use of state and reusable components would be helpful in the project. Both turned out to be true. I feel like I have a much more sold grasp on React now, although I know there is much more to learn and complex things to build…

131 days ago I started my journey to learn web development. What initially began as a tentative foray into investigating possible employment paths apart from my current career quickly evolved to a love of solving problems and an insatiable desire to learn more. I didn’t code every day, and there were a couple periods of barrenness, yet here I am---much farther along my development journey than when I first started. In the past 131 days I have gone from practically no coding experience to almost completing the front-end certification from Free Code Camp. I have created projects with more complex logic, including my first project in React, and continue to grow at a steady pace. I decided to join the 100 Days of Code challenge for a couple…

After much debugging and chasing of state errors for edge cases of operational order, I have finally concluded the development of my JavaScript calculator, which also happens to be my first React application. The live version of the project can be found here and the code can be found on my GitHub. This particular project stretched me the most thus far for multiple reasons. Learning a new library was definitely complex and took some back and forth researching (more on that later). The primary challenges was handling all of the logic necessary to operate the calculator and then handling a bunch of unexpected cases and order of operations that would break the ideal scenario’s code. Due to the complexity of handling the various states in React…

It has been an exciting two weeks in my web development journey. I've made a serious dent in the algorithm challenges since completing my Twitch viewer project. So far I have completed 18 challenges, leaving three advanced algorithm challenges between me and starting my advanced front end projects. These last few algorithms are kicking my butt though, as the difficulty between the intermediate and advanced challenges jumped up the parabolic curve. So far my strategy of stepping away from one challenge and moving to another when I get too frustrated has been paying off. Distance and time has led to some of my best breakthrough moments. Forcing it only pisses me off more, as well as weird looks when I mutter expletives at my computer on…