myNextProject

aosilvester — Wed, 29 Apr 2020 00:01:57 +0000

I have a certification in full stack web development using html, css, javascript, react, node, express, sql, mongo, etc.

I'd say that I only retained about 40% of it. mostly vanilla javascript. My current job is in Python - almost exclusively in a scraping context.

I have identified a few gaps in my knowledge that I want to work on.

Since I started to do more learning outside of work, I learned Redux and Terraform. I was pretty sure that Terraform would have landed me a job if it werent for Covid-19. Oh well.

My next project, one that I need some accountability to actually see through, is to use node.js and puppeteer to scrape https://www.footballdb.com/ and create a SQL database. This way I get more node experience, and I can learn a different way of scraping. With the output from the scrapes, I will be able to....make SQL Queries? I dont know what I'm doing with SQL well at all, but I need something where I understand the data if I want to create tables out of it.

So here is my plan written down:

Build scrape in node/puppeteer
Send output to templated SQL command seed dump...thing
???
Profit...in SQL.

It's not a perfect plan. I need to download a SQL program still, and there are other hurdles, I'm sure. Additionally, I am also sure that there are easier ways to achieve this goal, but I want to do it this way as a learning experience.

Any thoughts, comments, or words of encouragement would be wonderful. Thank for reading :)

myFirstPost.js

aosilvester — Tue, 28 Apr 2020 23:49:36 +0000

This is the first time I have had anything resembling a blog since I was a younger teenager. The internet has changed juuuust a bit since then.

A few years ago I felt like I was floating by in life and decided to change careers. I signed up for one of those coding boot camps. I had previous experience doing some extremely basic website design with css standards that were outdated by the mid 2000's. I had no experience in actual programming languages. It was an exercise in banging my head against the wall and hoping for information to come out, but in the end I made a functioning full stack website. Somehow.

After the bootcamp I found myself with tons of free time. I used all of it on applying to jobs. All of it. There was a lot of conversations that ended with me and the recruiter coming to the conclusion that I wasn't the right choice, and some take home coding challenges that were way above my level. Eventually I got an actual coding job. It was in a different coding language, and that made me uneasy, but it turned out to not be a problem at all. I have learned a lot on the job. Now I am ready to learn more, and I have identified a few areas that I want to focus on, but that will be for my next post.

If you made it this far, thanks for hearing my story. :)

DEV Community: aosilvester

myNextProject

myFirstPost.js