# Join Me on My Coding Journey

Cassie Cook — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 20:44:11 +0000

WHO

Hi, I'm Cassie!

I'm an aspiring front-end developer, lifelong learner, and someone who has discovered that I really enjoy the intersection between creativity and problem-solving that comes with coding.

WHAT

I'll be using this blog to document the concepts I'm learning as I make my way through the world of front-end development.

Expect posts about HTML, CSS, JavaScript, React, and whatever else I encounter along the way—including the concepts that click immediately and, probably more importantly, the ones that absolutely do not.

I'm not writing this blog because I'm an expert. Quite the opposite.

I'm writing it while I'm learning.

WHEN

You're meeting me pretty close to the beginning of my coding journey.

I've recently started working toward a Front-End Developer certification through Frontend Simplified, and I'm steadily building my skills through coursework and hands-on projects.

That means you'll get to follow along in real time as my understanding grows, my projects get more complicated, and.... hopefully(!) my code gets a little better.

WHERE

I'm currently coding from the wild and beautiful state of Alaska.

Eventually, I'd love to build and host this blog myself as another project in my portfolio. For now, DEV gives me a place to start writing while I continue developing the skills to build the version I have in my head.

WHY

This is really the reason I'm here.

I recently listened to a podcast that discussed the value of blogging while learning to code. The idea was simple: there's a difference between understanding something well enough to use it and understanding it well enough to explain it.

That stuck with me.

I've always learned best by writing things out. If I have to slow down, organize an idea, and explain why something works - not just copy the syntax that makes it work — I have to understand it on a much deeper level.

So, this blog is mostly for me.

It's a place to take concepts I'm learning, dig into them a little further, and try to explain them in plain English. It'll also give me a record of my progress that I can look back on later and, hopefully, wonder why I ever thought flexbox was so confusing.

But I'm also hoping it might eventually be useful to someone else.

I have ADHD, and sometimes the explanations that make perfect sense to everyone else just... don't make sense to my brain. I tend to break concepts apart, visualize them, experiment with them, and find my own way of understanding why they work.

If sharing that process helps even one other aspiring developer finally have an "Oh! That's what that means!" moment, that would be a pretty great bonus.

So, here we go.

I don't know exactly where this journey will take me yet... and I definitely don't know everything I'm doing.

That's kind of the point. Things will get messy.

I'm going to learn, build things, break things, Google an embarrassing number of error messages, figure out why my CSS isn't doing what I told it to do, and write about what I learn along the way.

If you're learning too, you're more than welcome to join me.

DEV Community: Cassie Cook

# Join Me on My Coding Journey