Skip to main content

Week 5-Progress

Going into week 5 I feel I am making great progress. 

 Yesterday I completed and submitted my Javascript Etch-a-Sketch project for Web Development 101. It's not perfect, but I added a couple of extra features (such as colour choice)-one improvement I could make is to change the colour choice to a radio button format and allow colour change without erasing the image.

 In the end, the project only took a few hours, but that was after going through HeadFirst books on HTML/CSS, JavaScript and jQuery. For some reason, my brain was stuck in HTML mode and I couldn't see how to create the webpage using only Javascript. Once I remembered the jQuery method of creating HTML elements, it was easy. 
I spent some time trying to figure out how to increase colour intensity with each mouseover event. The pseudocode is easy, but I can't get the Javascript syntax right-I will go back to it when my Javascript has improved.

 I spent the last day completing the Codecademy Ruby course-most of it was very straightforward (having spent a month on Java and Javascript). I haven't got blocks, procs, lambdas, classes and modules completely straight in my head yet: am I too ambitious to expect clarity after one day?

 For the Ruby basics section of Web Dev 101(The Odin Project), I am following these recommendations. That means I'm going to crack open Chris Pine's book on Learning to Program.

 I have just completed 3 Coursera courses: Data Scientist's Toolbox, R Programming and Computer Science 101. I plan to repeat R Programming in the future when I will be able to benefit more from the material.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Einstein's Logic Puzzle (SPOILER ALERT!)

On Monday I began working through a Discrete Math textbook in preparation for some courses I'll be taking in January. There was a beautiful logic problem in Chapter 1, apparently created by Einstein. This is one version of it: Five men with  different nationalities and with different jobs live in  con secutive houses on a street. These houses are painted  dif ferent colors. The men have different pets and have   dif ferent favorite drinks.  Determine who owns a zebra and  whose favorite drink is mineral water (which is one of the  favorite drinks) given these clues:  The Englishman lives  in the red house.  The Spaniard owns a dog.  The Japanese  man is a painter.  The Italian drinks tea.  The Norwegian  lives in the first house on the left.  The green house is  immediately to the right of the white one. The photogra pher  breeds snails.  The diplomat lives in the yellow house. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

CodeSchool vs Codecademy(or 'How socket inherits event listening methods and implements asynchronicity')

In this review I'm going to focus on the pedagogy that I see evident in some CodeSchool courses and compare them to  Codecademy. By pedagogy, I mean: 'How does CodeSchool teach?' and ' Does it do a good job of teaching?'. I'm going to argue that despite high quality videos, colourful web pages, and often ssspppeeeeeakkkiiiing...rrrreeally...slowly..., CodeSchool's pedagogy is inferior to that of Codecademy. There are many fantastic resources for learning to code on the web, and CodeSchool is one of them. So far I have completed courses in Ruby, Rails, Javascript, HTML/CSS, Jquery and Git on CodeSchool. The courses have all included high quality videos and colourful, interactive exercises- as well as  massive  pdf files of the slides ( the files take more than a minute to load on my machine .) The question is: does the higher production value mean better educational quality? The 'Try' courses on CodeSchool(such as Try Ruby and Try jQuery) are f...
Post a Comment
Read more

Final-Reference Variables-Constants in Java. What does it all mean?

So far, my programming journey has been easy riding. Everything in computer science I've come across so far seems so logical and (really) obvious after a moment's thought. (n.b. The following will contain mistakes, don't copy and paste this for your Comp.Sci.101 Assignment. If any readers can help clarify my thinking, it would be much appreciated.) Well, except for constants in Java. In Java, you can define a variable and give it a value:   ( e.g. Year current =1932;  creates an variable of type Year and initializes it with the value 1932). Speaking correctly, the variable   current  is NOT equal to 1932. Rather, current is a reference to a location in the computer's memory where the data 1932  is stored. A variable name like current  can be thought of as a listing in a telephone directory: "To find the current year, go to this address in the memory." Variable are so called because their values can change during the running of a program. For ...
Post a Comment
Read more