Coding Journal

Jordan Vidrine

Daily Coding Journal

An experienced business owner + musician with a demonstrated history of management in the Energy sector and an insatiable appetite for learning new and complex skills. Transitioning from an ownership role & seeking employment in Web Development as a Jr Full Stack Developer.

August 20th 2019

Today I want to make two posts. The first of which (this one) will document what materials and courses I have been going through this year. I’ll list them out in the order that I went through them in case you’d like to do the same. It has been a steady progression of difficulty and I feel like I have learned a lot. It has not been without its ups and downs as well as pretty difficult moments, but these courses have helped solidify a lot of javascript for me.

FreeCodeCamp

Javascript Algorithms and Data Structures Certification (Eq. 300 Hours)

  1. Basic Javascript
  2. ES6
  3. Regular Expressions
  4. Debugging
  5. Basic Data Structures
  6. Basic Algorithm Scripting
  7. Functional Programming
  8. Intermediate Algorithm Scripting
  9. Javascript Algorithms and Data Structures Projects

This was the first online javascript course I went through. I have to say it was very basic in reference to the UI and interaction, BUT it definitely taught me some foundational javascript and coding basics that propelled me onto the next courses.

I looked over the html and css sections but I am proficient in those two ‘languages’ so I didn’t spend too much time on it.

Codecademy (30 Hours)

To solidify the fundamentals of Javascript I also went through Codecademy’s course on the introduction to javascript. It was basically a better presented version of what freecodecamp offered and it helped solidify what I learned there.

Watch and Code

Practical Javascript (30+ Hours)
I felt like this was the BEST of the intermediate javascript courses I have taken. Gordon Zhu was an excellent teacher and went DEEP with each topic. The intro course was free and GREAT and led me to purchase a couple months of his premium course.

Watch and Code Premium (30-50+ Hours)
This was the next step up from the free course Gordon offered. From day one, we were steeped in the importance of reading complex code in order to further our understanding of programming. I feel like this mindset has helped me a lot and caused me to WANT to engage with difficult code and sit their until I can understand what is going on.

His emphasis on not getting caught up in the latest framework and trends, and instead going deep with vanilla javascript has taught me a lot.

Throughout the course I learned how to create my own versions of array methods like map, find, filter, forEach, and reduce. We got under the hood of everything I learned in my other courses and I feel like this was the most beneficial course I have taken to date.

Udemy

This website has THOUSANDS of courses. It can be overwhelming, but I found a couple courses taught by teacher’s I learned about through research and looking up boot camps.

The Advanced Web Developer Bootcamp (100+ Hours)
This course was ridiculous! I mean that in a good way. It covered SO MUCH that at times it was hard to keep up. I slowly went through 80% of the course (I stopped at the warbler back end section because I wasnt interested in it.)

I’ll list out some of the things I learned here:

  1. CSS Animations
  2. CSS + Flexbox
  3. Async Javascript + Requests
  4. Testing w/ Jasmine
  5. More recreating advanced array methods
  6. OOP with javascript
  7. Creating APIs with Express + MongoDB
  8. ES6
  9. Intermediate D3 (data vis)
  10. Intermediate React
    With this react section I was able to learn enough to build a couple of the apps in my current portfolio using it.
  11. Very basic Redux knowledge

The Complete Node.js Developer Course
I am currently in the process of taking this course. At this time I am about 80% finished. This course has also been amazing. The teacher balances out the tutorial/teaching with a good amount of letting the student figure things out on their own.

Throughout the process of the node course I have found myself able to implement each section of knowledge on my own in my own apps. I have been able to build my own APIs with node and express, learn how to use MongoDB for storage, and much more. This course has solidified a lot of back-end processes for me and got me more and more interested in what goes on behind the scenes on the web.

Some of the things I have learned and solidified are:

  1. Asynchronus programming
  2. Promises
  3. MongoDB
  4. REST APIs
  5. Using Postman as an API testing program
  6. Authenticating Users
  7. Working with Heroku for app deployment

Eloquent Javascript (available for free!)

This book by far has been the most challenging aspect of my learning. In the beginning it helped solidify what I had already been learning elsewhere, but the further I go into it, the more I learn from the book itself.

I believe it is written from a computer science perspective and this has been beneficial for me. It goes more in depth with the underworkings of javascript and programming in general.

While difficult, I feel like it has been a great resource to challenge me and get deeper with what I have been learning online. It has also taught me to sit with difficult problems and focus my attention on the issue until I come to a place where it makes sense to me.

This has been MOST evident in the latest chapter I am reading through. It is chapter 16 on creating a platform game with vanilla js and the browser. Which I will go into in my next post.

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