So my current coding schedule has been going well. I’m getting two hours on work days with few exceptions. Coding on my days off is pretty sporadic depending on family activities. I’m averaging around Ten coding hours per week right now and making good progress. I’m getting pretty anxious though and want to put in more hours coding. I think I actually go through withdrawals when I don’t code. I’m trying to find ways to squeeze in more coding times but it’s hard.

I’m done with the FCC Dungeon Crawler project. I had fun playing with the canvas. I could have spent more time tweaking some things here and there and even thought about using sprites and adding some animation. The basic functionality is there though and since there are other things I want to learn before starting my job search I decided it was time to move on. I may come back and play with it from time to time though. Might be something I work on with the kids, since they thought it was pretty cool.

Using Trello to keep track of this project went well. I still need to get used to it and work on my planning but I was able to lay out most of the major parts before I actually coded. It helped me speed things up because I didn’t waste time thinking about what to work on next. I just checked my Trello board and picked a part to work on.

This project was the last FCC React project. Next is the D3 section to finish out the Data Visualization certificate. I’m going to skip that for now and start working on back end projects. I’m trying to get job ready so I want to get familiar with testing and maybe get a taste of Node.js. I also think I need some polishing on my CSS and plain JS skills. So I’m going to start working through some challenges to tighten them up.

I’m on a roll now, and want to keep my momentum so see you next post.

Man it’s been awhile! With the exception of a short gap, I have been coding pretty steadily. In the last two weeks I’ve put my self on a 7 hour sleep schedule, which allows me to get about 2 hours of coding most days and around an 1 hour on exercise days. It seems to be a good balance and should allow me to be ready to job hunt around March 2018 like I was planning.

We will see how it goes, right now I am just focusing on making sure I code at least a little everyday. It is difficult for me because I am an “all in” kind of guy. If I feel I cannot dedicate or focus as much as I would like, I usually just skip it. That has resulted in a lot of lost time so I am trying to change that.

I finished the Game of Life project. It was challenging but I was able to figure it out, and I was actually shocked with how fast I was able to do it once I was actually working on it. I am now on the last React project that Free Code Camp has. It is an old school dungeon crawler and I had to side track to learn HTML canvas so I can generate the maps.

I did try something different with this project though. Before, I would just build out functions and components as I worked through the project and add comments after I was done. This time, I thought about the different components and elements I would need and what they would be made up of. I am also trying out Trello to help keep track of them and my progress. Trying to prepare myself to work as part of a team and not solo like I have been. I am probably going to look for some open source projects that are noob friendly after this project, so have to start thinking differently.

Well, back to the grind now.

I finished the recipe box project of FCC. I am making progress albeit slowly. I ran into another React quirk too. So this project wanted you to store the recipes in local storage so that if the user added/edited/deleted, any of those changes would be there when the page was refreshed. So adding and editing were working fine but deleting was not. I would delete a recipe and it would render on the page correctly but when the page was refreshed it would revert back to the undeleted version.

After, racking my brains for a bit there trying different things and re-reading the docs, the issue turned out to be I was invoking localstorage.setItem immediately after setState and before it actually reflected the changes. So moving the localstorage call to the componentDidUpdate method fixed the issue. It also streamlined my code because instead of having to create my own update() function that was called from three different functions I could just let the lifecycle method handle it.

So now on to the next project. I was a little down, because my coding hours were way below the 21 hours a week I originally wanted. But I am making progress, and I do not want to sacrifice my health, sanity or family just to try to hit 20 hours a week. I finished reading “The One Thing” this week and it helped me to see that as long as I am working towards my goal it is a win. So I am just gonna keep on grinding!

Man! So it’s been a little more than two months since I did any coding. I had to finish up on the house because it was time to return to Georgia. My leave time was up and I had to get back to work. I also neglected my fitness there for a bit so my wife and I decided to get back on track with that. So a full time job and working out six days a week did not leave a lot of time for coding.

I am backing off the workouts a bit to make time for coding. The time I have to code is less than my ideal but my time frame for switching to web development as a career has been extended so it’s not that big of a deal. I am also taking my kids through FCC. So far they have been liking it and breezing through it.

I thought I would be rusty and take awhile to ramp back up, but I was able to pick up where I left off and even moved past an issue I was having when I stopped. I am in the middle of the “Build a Recipe Box” project on FCC. I was struggling with incorporating React-Bootstrap into my project. I think I worked out the kinks though and should be able to complete this project soon.

Even though I am in the middle of getting my house ready to sell, I have been able to get a lot of coding in. I have completed the to do app. It is real basic functionality but I can use it as a base when I start the homeschool organizer.

I also completed two out of the five FCC SASS/React projects. A Markdown parser and a FCC camper leaderboard. I am able to get into long coding flows and I am even dreaming about coding now. I was struggling a bit with passing data from child to parent components, but now I have a handle on it.

I had to pick up SASS and had some grit my teeth, desk pounding moments while trying to incorporate it into my workflow. But I got that down now too thanks to youtube and npm/github documentation. I am definitely digging the nesting and variables to make styling more streamlined.

After I complete the next 3 FCC projects, I think I am gonna try to find a freelance or non-profit project to work on. I want to add some real world work to my portfolio. I also want to start attending some coding meet ups when I get back home and start moving in coding circles. I am having lots of fun learning and growing as web developer and I am eager to see where this journey takes me.

I have now completed the React Fundamentals course from React Training. I liked it and learned a lot. The instructor, Tyler Mcginnis, did a good job of explaining what he was doing and why. I felt like I was drinking from a water hose at times but I was able to wrap my head around the material.

So now I am working on projects to solidify what I learned. I am starting with a to do app that I will then incorporate into a family organizer for my kids to use as they homeschool. My wife uses a paper checklist that she prints every week but the kids have iPads so I figured I could digitize it and practice my React skills.

I also did CLI and Git refreshers on Codecademy and the guide on Github. So the projects will be stored there as repos that I will link to when they are done. I am satisfied so far with my progress but I need to be more disciplined and put in more time. Just so much going on right now, it is a little hard to focus. Look for those projects soon though.

Since I completed the front-end development section of Free Code Camp and I feel that I have a good grasp of javascript, I decided to learn React.js. FCC does not have a React section yet (apparently they do in their beta curriculum that I plan to check out) so I had to go elsewhere.

I read the Quick Start section of the React docs and it put me to sleep. I completed the two courses Codecademy offers and they made things much clearer but they are still working on part three.

After consulting “almighty” Google, I was put on to React Training and signed up. So far I am liking their overall teaching style. I ran into some snags though, first the follow along video in the “Setting up your first React component…” section moved to fast for my taste. It was frustrating to have to stop and start and try to “rewind” to make sure I was setting up everything up correctly.

Also, the instructor dove right in without explaining that my set up may not be like his set up, which I know is a given, but he failed to explain how I could either set it up the same way or accomplish what he was doing in the terminal and Sublime Text. Now I like a challenge, and I know how to find answers, so I was able to figure out what needed to be done on my end and complete the section, it was just an annoying distraction.

Other than that, it seems to be a good quality course. I am going to do a cli refresher before I start the next section though. I remembered some stuff but I am definitely rusty.

This blog will be more of a journal to chronicle what I am currently learning and my experiences around that. It may be dominated by coding topics initially but there will be a good mix of topics from health, nutrition, to tech and maybe some religion and politics to stir the pot a little.

Right now I am working towards becoming a web developer. I have the basics of HTML, CSS and Javascript down so I will now be moving towards get a grasp on one or two frameworks. I am starting with React.js and I will see how that goes before adding another one. It is May 2017 and I hope to have made the switch by the end of this year. I of course will document the journey here and keep you all updated.

Stay tuned and hope you get something out of all this.