You spin me right round...


Last week I was thrown back into the CodeClan washing machine of emotions!  I think I'm starting to get used to it now...spend 3 days being spun around not knowing up from down while new concepts are being hurled at us from all directions.  Day 4 is spent 'kind of' understanding the concepts and regaining your feet - sometimes with a cheeky extra spin thrown in when you think you've grasped something just to find out that there is yet ANOTHER dimension to it that you hadn't realised.  Day 5 is thankfully the day where you dust yourself down and realise that you DO understand what's going on ... and Breathe!

We are about to embark on week 2 of Javascript and I am like a kid in a sweet shop with excitement! Once I had arrived at day 5 last week I couldn't stop, I LOVED weekend homework!  We had to create an HTML form and then create event listeners to display the information for the user once the form was submitted.  Waaay quicker than the app we wrote with Python (ok so there was no database but still!) and I am now finding that I can understand the documentation more easily, so that was me, "okay, so what other event listeners can I add?" I am loving the mouseover and mouseout event listeners (where a change happens when you roll your mouse over an element), I had to restrain myself from making the list elements rainbow coloured when you move your mouse over them!





Vue

Vue is a front-end Javascript framework which is used to build user interfaces and single page applications.  Sounds straightforward...not so much!  I am writing this on Day 4 of week 7, we had an all afternoon lab which I was feeling pretty confident about, however as per my opening paragraph, all was not quite as straightforward as it seemed! Calling the API's is pretty straightforward - until you get a limited number of results per page! Getting the data to interact was better today, until you are reminded that you shouldn't be modifying your props (a way of passing data down in Vue) you should be using an event bus to modify the state.  However, a mantra that has emerged over the past 7 weeks is "Trust The Process".  I began to trust the process last week, so I am hopeful that Day 5 will see things starting to pull together!

API's

API stands for Application Programming Interface.  These things are amazing!  Being able to call one would have helped massively with all the things I wanted to do during Python project week.  As if to rub it in, the first API that we called had a list of 250 countries - complete with their flag, currency, population and numerous other facts (incase you don't recall I made a travel bucketlist app....)

Cypress

Another new concept that we have been introduced to this week is end to end testing.  So far we have been following TDD methodology and have been carrying out unit testing.  End to end testing is where you test the applications workflow from beginning to end.  Cypress is a great tool, it opens a server and gives you snapshots of your app while the tests are running.

Pushing Myself


So I'm not exactly overflowing with spare time at the moment, but I have a thirst to keep learning and become the best developer I can.  With that in mind, I signed up to attend another Women ConnecTech talk organised by CodeClan and Lloyds Banking Group during my lunch break.  It was really informative and one of the panel happened to be Alistair Forbes of The Scottish Tech Army.  I have copied the following from the website to give you an idea of what they do;

"Our mission is to mobilise the Scottish tech community, applying the talents, creativity and commitment of its members to achieve rapid delivery of technology solutions to some of the most important problems we face as a nation."

I registered to be a volunteer with the STA last week and had received a lovely friendly email back from them telling me to join their Slack channel and get involved!  I have to admit to being a bit intimidated and nervous as although I'm really keen to get involved, I want to be of value rather than asking loads of questions and needing my hand held!  After the talk I connected with Alistair on Linkedin and he gave me the push I needed to join the slack group and meet the STA community.  And I can report that they are really lovely!  I got several 'waves' to welcome me to the group and a previous CodeClan graduate who I met at an online social quickly took me under his wing and has given me loads of great tips to help me get involved. 

Another top tip came from my classmate Neale, he posted a link to Exercism, which is a great website!  You can sign up for any number of different language 'tracks' which all have a number of exercises to complete.  You get one at a time and then submit your code to a mentor who gives you feedback (you can bypass the mentor and work through the exercises without feedback, but, in for a penny and all that!) I am thinking that this will be a great way to keep my hand in with Python and practice my Javascript at the same time.  I will keep you posted on how I progress with this!

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