Week 3


I can't believe we're in week 3 already! The days are really flying by and we have learned so many new things this week. 

                                 

Meet Bert - Bert was a present from CodeClan - he arrived just before the course started and lives under my monitor.  I was a bit bemused when he arrived - I had thoughts like, "well, it's always nice to get a present but a rubber duck is slightly random!"  Then the kids saw him and of course they wanted him! Well I'm glad that I held onto him as it was explained to us that 'rubber ducking' is a practice used by many developers to talk through their code when debugging.  I've already told you how lovely and patient my partner is when it comes to listening to me talk through what I've learned each day....well...3 weeks in and that patience looks like its starting to wear thin!  Thank goodness for Bert!


UX Design

Persona's, sketching, wire framing and prototypes - I loved it!  I love the whole planning your app out step by step, visualising every button and where it leads and what the user experience is going to be when they're using it.  I can see how understanding the user journey and how using your app will make them feel makes you a much better and rounded developer.  I can't wait to get my hands on a good wire framing package and try it out- the results are so impressive, maybe something for project week?! 


CSS and HTML

I had a little bit of experience using HTML and CSS before the course, I love being able to see your HTML layout being made "pretty" by CSS - definitely the designer in me! What I wasn't so keen on was that there was a lot of 'trial and error' in getting positioning and layout right.  Enter flexbox and flexgrid - these tools really help make lining elements up a lot easier - I think it will be a case of the more I use it the easier it will become to gauge where things should be aesthetically.  During our first CSS/HTML lab my partner and I were tasked with building a travel website - a pretty cruel brief I think in these covid times! We had 2 hours to work on it so it's still a work in progress but you can see from the picture below just how much code goes into creating one web page!


 

Flask

Learning about Flask has definitely been the biggest jump this week, we can now create  interactive websites where users can input information and see that information returned to them!  Flask is a framework that combines Python, HTML and CSS enabling us to produce a web page that has functionality - already - after just 3 weeks!


Weekend Homework

I've been reluctant to write about the weekend homework assignments, mainly because they take up so much head space at the time.  However 3 weeks in and I guess I should share with you what has been a bit of a rollercoaster of emotions! Week 1 was all about writing functions and getting them to pass pre-made tests - which now sounds really easy but at the time was a bit daunting - we had only just been introduced to these test functions so reading them still took a bit of effort.  Some of the functions I wrote passed first time (whoop!) Many of them had little syntax errors which were easily fixed, and a few of them actually kept me awake at night! One of the answers actually came to me while I was dropping off - I kid you not!  Thankfully I wrote it down in my notes app on my phone, went to sleep and when I tried it in the morning it worked!  



It shows you though, just how obsessed we get with the weekend homework's!  They are  a chance to consolidate our weeks learning but also to 'prove' to ourselves that we can actually do this!  Your inner critic is always the harshest!  


Week 2 homework I actually enjoyed (I know, wait until you read about week3's homework though - I was right to enjoy that happy feeling while it lasted!) This week we had to create some different classes and get them all interacting with each other.  We were making classes for a Karaoke bar, checking customers into different rooms, making them playlists, starting a bar tab.  I had so much fun!  It all worked, I was delighted! 


Enter weekend homework number 3, I had it all planned out, diagrams and functions drawn, filing system all laid down, what I wanted was displaying on the web page.  But could I get the winner result to display on the page? No!! We were making a simple game for rock, paper, scissors and displaying the players choices and the winner on a web page using Flask and Jinja2 templates.  Everything was displaying except the winner result.  I knew that the function was working because I had tested it, I knew my HTML was right because other bits of Python were displaying on the web page.  I spent the whole weekend researching - I even did a Flask tutorial!  My Codeclan buddies tried to help (thanks guys it was much appreciated!.  I had gone through 3 of the 4 B's (Brain, Books, Buddy, Boss) I needed the Boss's help!  There was 'one wire' that needed connected up is how it was put to me - the lightbulb came on - of course it did!  Well I won't make that mistake again...


  

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