DEV Community: Doyen Àlùkò

Are crash courses for tech newbies?

Doyen Àlùkò — Wed, 15 Nov 2023 20:41:09 +0000

I started my tech journey earlier this year, in February to be precise. When I started, I had it in mind to cover the entire front-end development in the first three months, and then spend another three months on the backend development. By my calculations back then, I'd have become a full-stack developer by August. I was bent on achieving this target, and I set out to find the fastest route to my journey.
The first material I picked up was Andrei Neagoie's zero-to-mastery course on Web development. I was doing just fine with this course, and then I got introduced to Angela Yu's material along the line too. I fell in love with her material immediately, and I began to use this material to buttress my first course. I eventually started learning from both materials simultaneously! Whenever there was confusion on a subject in Andrei's course, I'd use Angela Yu's material to solve the puzzle per time.
This approach worked for me; until I decided to build a page with a simple framework like Bootstrap, and I ran into all manner of issues.
I struggled with the entire project, and I made a mess of things in this project. Can you imagine spending close to a month trying to sort out what I got wrong? I had to reach out to a tech sis, who eventually bailed me out and explained the documentation of Bootstrap to me.
By the time I was done with this project, I decided to forge ahead with my learning, and I got to the CSS grid and layout and the responsive design. Andrei's course touched on it, and I didn't bother to understand it better.
I felt I was done with the entire HTML&CSS part, and that I could move on to Javascript. I was excited to have gotten past the stage of HTML and CSS, and I was eager to get into Javascript. I followed the same pattern, and I was using Andrei's course and Angela Yu's course simultaneously for the Javascript study again. I honestly felt there was nothing wrong with my learning all along. And then, my tech sis gave me a challenge.
She was on the HNG challenge at the time, and she told me to clone a site using HTML and CSS alone, without frameworks. I felt it wouldn't be an issue initially; until I started! I started and I made such an awful mess of things. It became obvious to me instantly that I did not know HTML and CSS enough. What could have happened? But I spent more than 5 months on this alone, using two materials simultaneously. I had to look for a solution to this mess.
I was then introduced to the CSS course by Max Schwarzmuller on Udemy by my friend. I decided to give the course a go, but I had to attend a physical boot camp for a month after two weeks into this course. I had to disrupt my learning and I focused on the physical bootcamp alone. I was crammed with total tech newbies, and the instructors started web development afresh in the class. I saw a comical trend in the class, one which reminded me of myself. There was so much to learn within a month, and they all struggled.
For me, it was a way of fine-tuning my learning. I was the only one that was able to flow well with the instructor, the comical side of the story is that I sometimes wasn't allowed to answer questions in the class.
We were asked to clone a website as our final project, and it was a piece of cake for me. I was able to work on the layout well, but it still did not feel perfect to me. I then reverted back to the CSS course that I was taking before the physical boot camp. Layout became so easy for me as I went deeper into the course. I am at the tail end of the course right now, and I am reflecting on my journey so far.
I have come to a bold conclusion right now, and that is the fact that web development boot camps aren't exactly for total tech newbies. I believe strongly that it is for advanced learners who need to pick up on a topic; and don't have much time. The veterans will be able to digest the contents of crash courses easily. Three people recently approached me, and asked me to teach them web development. Initially, I was going to recommend Angela Yu's course to them. As a matter of fact, I had already shared the material with one of them. However, I had to change the course to the HTML and CSS course by Jonas Schmedtmann. I love the course because it is elaborate enough.
The course by Jonas Schmedtmann is elaborate enough for any newbie to sit down with, and digest easily. The only sacrifice this course will take is your time as a newbie, but I can guarantee you that you will have an unshakeable foundation to forge ahead in web development. I already got the material for the full Javascript course by Jonas Schmedtmann, and I intend to digest the whole course before going into Javascript frameworks and the other topics in my front-end syllabus. I do not want to have a shallow knowledge of Javascript as a developer.
My sincere advice to newbies in tech is to take dedicated HTML and CSS courses before taking a full Javascript course for a solid foundation in the tech journey. Please do not jump on a crash course as a newbie, your depth may be shallow and you may not know enough as demanded by the tech market.
Now, I feel so confident ahead of the Javascript study. I am not new to it, but I want to commit to a pure study of the subject starting from next week. I'll wrap up the advanced CSS course before the end of this current week. I just believe that it is going to be a good thing to share what I've learned in my first year in the Web development journey.
I speak from a very sincere heart that some may see as being biased, but I do not believe that crash courses are for tech newbies. They may do you more harm than good. Why risk being half-baked for something you want to build a career upon when you can spend extra time to solidify your foundation?

The second framework project

Doyen Àlùkò — Fri, 14 Jul 2023 10:25:21 +0000

Practice makes perfect they say, this has been my experience after this second Bootstrap project. There isn't much to say about this second project anyway. I have come to see that you cannot pay little attention to details and get it right in Bootstrap. It is mandatory to take out time to read through the documentation and apply them appropriately. I did not spend enough time doing this in the previous project. I had to take a second Bootstrap class, using the second material by Angela Yu.
When it comes to the world of programming, I have come to see such a sharp contrast between Andrei's mode of teaching and that of Angela Yu. In the practical aspect of being a programmer, there is a good chance that Andrei is the better programmer, but when it comes to teaching and breaking it down for all to understand, no one comes close to Angela Yu. She is untouchable when it comes to teaching. If you are reading this, and you are considering going into programming at some point, I will strongly advise that you take out time to go through her course to buttress whatever you may learn. She is such an amazing teacher, and it has been a blessing to have her material at my disposal.
I forgot to mention some of my priceless lessons in this project. Compared to my old method, I am getting a good hang on how to debug CSS now. The basic trick to debug your code is to use the developer tools of whatever browser you're using, Chrome in my case. But for reason, I used to rely on my text editor as my primary debugging tool. Debugging simply means figuring out what is wrong with your code if what is being displayed on your browser is not what you want. If a thing`s final output is wrong, you should naturally go back to your process to check what went wrong. And in programming, you have to check out what you are seeing on your app or page if it is what you want to see. And in case you are getting an undesired result, you have to use your developer tools to inspect the page to figure out what went wrong in the process.
Debugging can get quite overwhelming with the right method of using the developer tools on Chrome. You can imagine how tedious it must have been to try to debug CSS using the text editor alone. I used to get it right anyway, but I have come to see that using developer tools makes the job faster and more effective. It is the ideal way of debugging CSS.
And of course, I learnt about the legendary Z-index! It was so much fun to see the practical application of this feature of CSS. This is simply all about the stacking order of page elements. An object has the regular X-Y axis on a plain sheet, but the Z-index makes the object come alive. It brings a 3-D balance to the element in view; and makes it appear as if it is coming towards the screen or farther away from the screen, depending on what the developer wishes to achieve.
One other thing I learnt in this project is code refactoring. The most basic way to explain this is to liken this to factorization in mathematics. This makes the HTML&CSS codes look very neat and well arranged, and as a result, others can easily go through whatever code one has written. You will have an easy time locating errors in your code if you pay enough attention to this while writing your code. Code refactoring is very important as a programmer because it makes life easy for you generally.
I think this is just about this current module. There's another class on design, just before I get to the section on CSS grid and layout. After which, I'll go into the world of JavaScript! I can't tell why everyone says this is rather difficult, but I look forward to this programming section. I just believe that it is possible to do. After all, there are many programmers out there already who live on this, and they do not have two heads.
I'll share the link to the just concluded Bootstrap project again. This is not a complete project like every other website anyway, but this is rather one to test my knowledge of all that I have learnt so far. Several buttons on the page won't work because I did not include any additional links for them. But please feel very free to give me your thoughts on my progress so far.
The link to the just-completed framework project.

First bootstrap project

Doyen Àlùkò — Mon, 03 Jul 2023 21:01:25 +0000

After spending such a long time oscillating around about the concept of Bootstrap, and how to use it for development, I finally made a major headway! I am quite thrilled and excited right now because the efforts paid off. I was able to develop this page within three days, coupled with the fact that I have a full-time cinema job as well. Every free second/minute/hour/day counts more than ever for me now. It is not uncommon to see me looking up hex codes while on my phone in my leisure time. The past 72 hours have been interesting, and engaging for me.
This whole project started by picking the specific project I wanted to do among all the options that I had before me. In all honesty, I thought this stuff would take me close to a week, but I was rather shocked to see how fast it was for me to finish up a page like this, using Bootstrap and some templates. I deployed my local stylesheet in this project as well, but the overall speed was quite impressive.
There isn't much to write in this post, other than to say that this prospect of Bootstrap can make you lazy as a developer. The best way to explain this is to liken it to driving, yet again. Bootstrap is automatic driving, and CSS grid and layout coupled together will make up manual driving. The next topic in my course is the CSS grid and layout, and this is the manual version of what Bootstrap does. I am looking forward to being able to get a good understanding of how to make my page responsive manually, without having to rely on Bootstrap.
This page is fully responsive and everything on it works just fine. Upon the completion of this project, I feel a bit hurt. It hurt because it took me a couple of days to deploy the Bootstrap itself, after spending close to two months of confusion on it. I still cannot believe it took that long to get a hang of it. But the good thing is the fact that it is all over. I am looking forward to the much more elaborate method of making my page responsive, which is the CSS grid and layout topic.
The last time I opened this draft was on the 25th of June, and as of then, thought I was done! All for me to test the mobile page, and it was sliding. I became restless because the page that I thought was responsive, was not responsive at all. My code broke at several points and I did not know how to go about it initially, and my first point of action was to search Google and to reach out to my tech community for help. I did all that I could do, but I couldn't find an immediate solution to my case. Everyone was busy with one thing or the other. Tech folks are always busy with tech anyway. It seemed to me like was going, and I couldn't afford to stay idle for a few days.
I decided to start the bootstrap course afresh with my second-course material from Dr Angela Yu. I took up a fresh project for the course, to learn and back to the ZTM course by Andrei to implement my knowledge. And of course, I immediately began to see certain points where I went wrong. One critical thing to know when using Bootstrap is the fact that you have to read through the documentation properly, and then follow the guidelines if it's going to work for you. But I did not take enough time to apply the instructions in the documentation. So, I was bound to run into several errors along the line, but bit by bit, I began to fix the bugs.
At some point in time, it occurred to me that I used different cases for my images in the text editor compared to what I had in the local folder on my PC. This single solution fixed all my broken images. Before this, only two images were displayed out of 15 image files in the same folder. It also occurred to me that the Navbar was faulty and wouldn't work, so I thought. But after learning from how Angela Yu's teaching on Navbar, I knew that my Navbar simply had to work. I went back to my old project and implemented the knowledge but it still did not work. It also occurred to me that I did not add the script link for the JavaScript above the body closure on my page for behavior. Upon doing this, my Navbar began to work fully and was fully responsive for both medium and small viewports.
I also had to change the class of all the columns from "col-sm-12 col-md-12 col-lg-12" to a simple one, "col". I had to change every column class back to this one, and I put the entire page inside a container to make it more compact. By all the steps above, one would expect that the page would have automatically become responsive right? But to my greatest shock yesterday, the page was still siding horizontally on mobile, which simply means that a page is not responsive whenever it is sliding horizontally on mobile. Thank God I have a tech sis on standby.
Esther eventually showed me the final piece of the puzzle. While developing the page, I wrote dimensions for all the images and they all had a standard size of 450px by 450px. This size is bigger than the 375px size of the mobile viewport. By default, a 375px viewport is smaller than the width of 450px. For the page to accommodate the size I specified, it has to slide! I had to check the bootstrap documentation to make images responsive, which is "img-fluid". I added this to the image class for every image file to make them responsive. I had to go back to my local stylesheet to delete the dimensions that I gave every single image on my stylesheet.
I went back to the page to refresh it, and there was it looking all beautiful and responsive! This was where I saw a painful demonstration of the local stylesheet overriding the bootstrap CSS.
It's been roughly 12 days on this project, and I am thankful to God that it is all over. It was a painful period for me personally because I clocked a personal record of 12 hours of programming in a day. I ended up going to bed by 2 am because I was sorting out my code, and I got up quite late for the day. But the good thing is that I've been able to learn valuable things from the whole experience, things that cannot be taken away from me anymore.
I will share the links to my pages here, the responsive and the non-responsive pages. I chose to leave the non-responsive page alone without deleting it; so that I won't forget the lessons I learnt.
I said I was going to post the broken code here as well, but I deleted it along the line. All I have right is the final project for the site, and here is the link to the page.Movie site project

Bootstrap!

Doyen Àlùkò — Thu, 22 Jun 2023 12:51:23 +0000

Ah so yes, I finally gained extra progress in this whole journey. I started the section of Bootstrap properly some days back after spending so much time understanding how to use Bootstrap! I honestly can`t believe it took me close to two months to find my way into Bootstrap. I hope the developers out there will forgive me for taking so long to understand the starting point of this framework called Bootstrap. I need folks to understand what Bootstrap is because I have neutrals following this blog.
A very basic way of explaining Bootstrap without necessarily going into too much detail is to take this to the driving scene. Just imagine going to driving school and taking your lessons with a manual vehicle, and then you are gifted an automatic vehicle after mastering how to drive the manual car. This may not be the most ideal explanation for Bootstrap but it comes close. Bootstrap is essentially a framework that automates quite a lot of things you can do with CSS.
The only twist to this is the fact that when you need your page to function in a certain manner, you may have to deploy your stylesheet and style your page manually. The local stylesheet overrides the Bootstrap framework in practical applications. Bootstrap makes your work easy, but it is there to help use the local stylesheet and write codes faster.
I was overwhelmed at some point in time while working on this Bootstrap project because I was new to it at the time. I am taking out the time right now to unwind from the mental stress of setting up the page that I am going to share at the end of this post. I was able to build a responsive page using the Bootstrap. Please feel free to try out the page, and fill in the contact address on the landing page.
This is the progress so far in this tech journey. Now I can revert back to my course.
The Bootstrap project link

My first non-responsive page

Doyen Àlùkò — Fri, 09 Jun 2023 20:36:18 +0000

I've been off the grid on this blog, but I've got to get going again. It happened that I had such a major saga with this fever all through April and a good part of May. It was a back-and-forth thing and I was literally unable to sit down with programming successfully for almost two months! But for every tunnel, there's got to be a light at its end right? A major break came at the tail end of May, and I was able to complete the project that I was working on before the illness. It wasn't an uphill task but a call to duty for me.
I have to explain what it means for a page to be non-responsive for the sake of those who aren't into tech. A non-responsive page in the simplest of terms is one that won't display effectively on all devices. For example, I developed this page on my PC, and the screen orientation for an average PC is landscape mode. As a result, every single thing on this page will function normally, but it won't work well on other devices because the page was not built to respond to other devices but a PC and the landscape mode on devices. I have tried to load the page on my phone, which is on portrait mode by default but it did not respond well, but the response was better when I rotated my screen to the landscape mode.
This is what it means for a page to be responsive anyway. But pages have to fit into all viewports on the several devices available, don't they? A viewport is simply the screen of your device, no matter the kind of device you use. I am currently learning how to make my page responsive, and the first point of action in this course is the Bootstrap session. I am relatively new to the prospect of using Bootstrap to make my pages responsive, but I am learning bit by bit.
I remember how I was immediately stranded when I started the module. I kept missing the simplest stuff about the Bootstrap section. All I had to do to get started was either to copy the CSS code for the Bootstrap directly from the website and then add it to my project on my text editor or to download the CSS/JS file from the Bootstrap website, copy the code and add it to the text editor as well. I learnt the value of having shoulders to lean on from this saga. Thank God for having a tech-sis like Esther.
Please do not attempt to go through the race of life alone, no man is ever an island. I strongly believe that God created humans for positive and productive interactions. I had to go on a mini adventure with her on this particular day and I showed her what I was facing. All she did was give me a few tips on how to get an external explanatory video on YouTube, which I did. What seemed to be an immovable mountain for a while turned out to be the simplest stuff ever! It does pay to have wise counsel around you in life.
This is the progress so far anyway, I am currently unravelling the mystery of using Bootstrap to build a responsive page. I will also put up the link to the non-responsive page that I built below;

https://doyinaluko.github.io/intermediatecss/

The pending CSS error has been fixed, and my mini work space is in progress.

Doyen Àlùkò — Wed, 05 Apr 2023 11:41:11 +0000

So yes, I really needed to breathe fresh air in this coding. I started to feel overwhelmed at some point in time and decided to spice up my learning process by getting additional material, and I learnt something new. All along, I had no idea that I could change the theme of my Google developer tools to black. So yes, I forgot to mention that I love it when the background of the pages I`m working on is black. As much as I can, I set the background colours to black when building pages, just before reverting it back to the desired colour for the page. Black is a colour that appeals to me a lot, I really do not like when colours keep flashing into my eyes randomly. Back to my Google developer tools, I tried it out and the theme indeed changed to black! A dark screen helps me a lot when working on the PC, trust me when I say that you don`t need too much light entering into your eyes as an individual.
And on another note, I think I may have discovered the issue with my HTML/CSS files in my own project. I really cannot explain why but I've been able to find a way to write my own HTML&CSS codes the way I want instead of following Angela Yu's methods line by line. I arrived at the same output at every single point in time with her, but now the issue is the fact that she introduced new lines that serve as a form of continuation to everything she's been teaching all along. The only way I know to solve this issue is to restart this course all over. Either I do this, or I deploy high-level debugging skills to locate my variances, which I am yet to acquire. The solution for me at this juncture is to restart the course and follow my teacher step by step for now. The time to experiment and do things my way will come along the line. I do not want to get into the trap of having too many materials and dragging things for too long before learning. As much as I want to learn things thoroughly, I must also be conscious of the fact that I do not have to necessarily spend a century learning this. I will start the project all over and see what happens this time around.
This paragraph marks the start of a new day, and something unique is going on right now at work. I am at work but we probably won`t do anything official today due to a certain policy. As a result of this, today is literally a free day for me. The ideal thing to do this morning is to sit down with my course and start it all over again. Let`s see how one goes from here. It is time to follow Angela Yu, step by step and not do anything outside what she teaches for now. On this particular day, I did go very far in the course satisfactorily. I eventually got to the root of the error in the previous project, and you will definitely not believe where I got it all wrong.
I made the mistake of not giving the "div-element" a top padding of 100 pixels! That was all I did that kept giving me the error all through the previous project. Every other thing I did kept reflecting the error on a larger scale. I learnt a valuable lesson with this particular mistake here, and that is the fact that a slight mistake that is left unchecked at the early stage can graduate into a major shipwreck in the long run. Imagine I had to start a project all over again because I forgot to add a top padding of 100 pixels. 
On another note, I have not had time to sit down with programming satisfactorily for some days now. I have been setting up my own workspace for this whole journey, and the past 8 days or so have been totally demanding physically. But this will be all over in the next 8 days or so. And then I have all the time in the world to do my stuff effortlessly and be more productive in my tech journey. One thing that every developer needs, without fail is a personal workspace. I am grateful to God honestly, now I can be without the distractions that have consistently slowed me down in this programming.
This post is rather quite personal, but it won`t hurt to share this too. I look forward to what the period afterwards will look like for me in this tech journey. Finally, I have my very own work space!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! God is too good and kind.

Stay tuned for more on this journey. ❤️

My respect for those who have gone ahead in tech

Doyen Àlùkò — Sun, 26 Mar 2023 20:45:38 +0000

A good place to start this post will be to use a dear friend of mine as the case study here. Whenever we are out somewhere and she sees a car, all she ever talks about is how sleek the car looks. It is always about the external features of cars for her as an individual, and many ladies that I have met are largely like that. But for someone who is into what is under the hood of a vehicle, you know that the internal parts of any vehicle play a vital role in what happens to the exterior. In engineering, for example, you learn more about the internal combustion engine, the transmission system, the hydraulic system, the ignition plug, the brake system, the fuel ratio, the general maintenance of engines and many other kinds of components that are not visible externally in vehicles. 
You know, it really takes one who has adequate knowledge of what goes on inside a vehicle to fully appreciate what he sees physically in a vehicle. Take for example, I personally pay close attention to how the engines of automobiles sound on a good day, This helps me to give a mental assessment of the quality of the car as a whole. The things that are hidden have a great impact on the things we see and admire. This same analogy here goes with programming! I think I never really paid much attention to many things about how browsers, applications, and software worked until this period of my life.
Nowadays, I have learnt to go deeper into how a number of things work on the internet, and by default, I appreciate the work of developers more now. In fact, I am always scrutinizing websites to see how I can do the same kinds of stuff that the developers have done and to see ways of doing them my own way. These days, I look at websites or applications and I literally phase out and see how to implement the markup languages I`ve been learning so far, HTML and CSS to be precise. Even for anyone who is not a developer that is reading this post or any other website, all you will see are things like the fine background images, the fine colours, the fonts and so on, but I see markup languages by looking at pages and applications nowadays.
The past few days have been all about checking my HTML/CSS files for the personal Web page I've been working on because there is a mistake somewhere,  which I'm yet to decipher. One vital thing that I've learnt about coding is the fact that coding is all about solving problems. I mean, what else will you do in coding if you don't solve problems? Well, I am currently facing a major one, which has been overwhelming. At some point in time, I thought about running away from full-stack web development; and going into something else. But I refuse to quit this whole thing. There can be only one winner in this coding, and it's going to be me. I'll win in grand style.
In all honesty, I still feel like I am yet to get the full grasp of what HTML&CSS are about, after spending more than a month on both topics. I am not yet satisfied with what I've learnt so far; because I feel like there is more work to be done. I have literally covered all there is to cover in Angela Yu's HTML/CSS course, and I am quite unsatisfied with what I have learnt. The next thing to do by default is to go on with the "Bootstrap" topic, seeing as it is the next item on the brochure of the two courses I have from Andrei Neagoie and Angela Yu.
Perhaps this may sound weird but I still feel the need to add Steele Colt's Web development course to my library and go through the HTML/CSS section yet again, before I decide to go ahead with the Bootstrap topic or not. Well, it is a new week, and it comes with its own specific goal for me. I must finish the HTML/CSS section of Steele Colt's course as soon as possible; because I need to move on in this tech journey anyway.
I remember my mindset towards tech back in November when I conceived the idea of this tech journey. I had it in mind to rush through everything and be done with any course before the end of the first quarter of the year 2023, but the first quarter of the year is literally over, and there is this surge of contentment in my heart. The rush to complete a tech course has disappeared somewhere along the line, and I am now more concerned about having a solid foundation in the line I have chosen. Nothing beats having a solid foundation, and if tech is the future for the years to come, then having a rock-solid foundation won`t be out of place for me.
Nevertheless, the past month in this tech journey has helped me to appreciate many things that I never placed much value upon. Now I know a bit of what it means to develop a fully functional site, and it is really a deep line of work. Props to all of you that are already well established in the field ❤.

The hurdles I`ve had to face

Doyen Àlùkò — Thu, 23 Mar 2023 08:16:20 +0000

Yes, so this is a new post and I really should talk about the challenges I've faced so far in the journey. In my own opinion, I really think that one of the greatest obstacles to anything in life is the individual involved. One's mindset has a lot to do with whatever one is up to at the time. I have felt lazy to code at times but the drive to make the most out of life, and out of this journey has kept me on my toes. The only option on my exam sheet is success in full-stack web development, and that remains the goal.
I am literally at a stage in life now where many things have ceased to exist, and I am less concerned about many things right now. It just seems as if coding is the only thing I can think of by default. There have been enough reasons to get distracted over the past couple of days, but the desire to code has literally outweighed them all. For every single day that passes by, I face new challenges in this stuff.
I remember the challenge I had with using the VS code text editor just some days back. It took me a number of days to figure out the mistake I was making on VS code! I realized that live pages did not load anymore! I kept hitting the F5 button to debug and run my code but nada. Every single thing I tried out kept failing. In fact, I went as far as going on YouTube to check out videos to address the error code.
I got a solution eventually to the issue by creating a .json file, and at some point, I had to delete the .vscode folder in the files section right on the VS code text editor itself. I thought the problem was solved by this, but then I discovered that VS code was locked to a certain page. Locked in the sense that, it kept loading a particular page regardless of the HTML I opened! I remember how I began to sweat over this and couldn't work freely anymore.
Eventually, I reverted back to using my old Sublime text editor. But deep down in my heart, I kept feeling defeated because of the saga with the VS code text editor. I got back to it again, and I got the same error message. In fact, I uninstalled and installed the latest version, but it still did not work! I uninstalled it again and used the MS store to install it again, but nada. I got the very same exact error message that I was getting all along.
And then, something comical happened just yesterday as I was working. I remember that I was working on the CSS static and relative positioning tutorial yesterday. Of course, by default, you'll work more with the CSS than the HTML in this section. And then, I mistakenly hit the F5 button while the CSS file for the project was open and it gave me the error code I'd been getting all along. Of course, it occurred to me that I wanted to open the HTML file. So, I opened the HTML file and hit the F5 button and the live page opened normally without any error code.
I had to take a break, and then slap myself back to reality! What just happened? I decided to hit the F5 button again on the CSS file and I got the same error message, but the error message did not show in the same application with the HTML file. In fact, it occurred to me that I used to press CNTRL+F5 to open the live page, without realizing that all I needed to do was to press the F5 button instead of all the stress I had been going through all along. So yes, I discovered the root of the troubles I went through over the past few days, and this might also help any other newbie. I learnt that you do not load your live page directly by hitting the F5 button from the CSS file of a project, but rather from the HTML file of the same project.
What I have just described above here sounds probably simple and straightforward right? But imagine having to go for days and almost a week making this same mistake. Straight up, I could not do anything for almost two days because of my drive to find a solution to the error on my text editor. But I am grateful to God for the opening of my eyes to see where I was getting it wrong all along.
I also found a seamless way to write posts like this just some days back. The rate at which technology is going is fast-paced, and if one is not knowledgeable enough, the simplest of the simplest things may elude you. I have always had an android phone over the years and I know about the synchronization of data. All I ever did was synchronize my contacts and use Google photos, but it never occurred to me that I could use tools such as "Google docs", "Google sheets", "and Google keep" in the same in which one uses any of the word/excel/PowerPoint desktop tools and have them synchronized with my phone and PC.
In plain English, I can start writing on a tool like "Keep" or "Google docs" on my phone and then continue writing on my PC while using the PC. They are synchronized together to work in unison. Take, for example, I started out by writing more than 70% of this post on my phone before finishing up the same on my PC. It is absolutely amazing what one can do with these gadgets we carry about innocently. I wish I knew about this many years ago!
Well, thats about the hurdles Ive had to face in my tech journey so far. In all honesty, it has been a challenging one. It is time to start off a coding day yet again. I will have to carry on with "The dark art of centering elements with CSS' this morning and see how far I go today before going to work. I have a few topics to go in this revision with Angela Yus web development course. By my calculation and estimation, I should be done with the CSS section and move into "Bootstrap" by next week. And I want to point out something here as a way of closing this post. It is not weird to see guys doing very well in tech. As a matter of fact, I started this journey with Andrei Neagoies web development course on Udemy. I paused after I got to the bootstrap section and decided to do a quick revision of all I`ve learnt so far. That was how I got the web development course material from Angela Yu. It has been a great journey with the material of an outstanding web development tutor as well. Angela Yu teaches web development in plain terms and it is very easy to follow her.
Being able to look into the web development world through the viewports of two outstanding teachers has been a great one so far. This is me making a big shout to all the tech sisters out there. Angela Yu is a living legend honestly. The ease with which she teaches is absolutely amazing.

My journey into tech.....

Doyen Àlùkò — Tue, 14 Mar 2023 13:38:05 +0000

This is just a brief summary of what I have been doing in the web development course
I have had it in mind to start something new in tech ever since last year but a number of things did not materialize last year, which left me literally incapacitated you know.
This new year started out and it was almost headed in the same direction as that of last year, but a change eventually took place when I got my Dell E7480 on February 01, 2023.
The Dell E7480 is a pretty decent laptop for tech you know. I forgot to mention that I wanted to go into data analytics initially.
But I contacted the tech school, Malhub and they said that the data analytics class for the year has kicked off already and that I could not enrol anymore.
I was then left with a number of options, and I ended up opting for the full-stack web development course. I took wise counsel from a dear brother.
He told me not to start any tech course immediately, but rather, to get myself well acquainted with my new device. You have to master your weapon before taking it to battle yes?
And of course, I started by tweaking my laptop to suit my taste, I upgraded my SSD from 128 GB to 512 GB, and I turned the 128 GB SSD into an external storage device, my SSK.
I decided to make the exterior of the laptop more appealing to my eyes anyway, I got to put up a wallpaper in the matrix code, with the map of the world on it. Cool right?
By now, I mistakenly damaged the fingerprint scanner of my Dell E7480 but this will be sorted out later on anyway.
Oh wait, I forgot to mention that I am typing this on the 14th day of the month of March!
So yes, it was time for me to resume tech school, but a policy had taken over my country by the third week of February! The CBN flooded the new naira notes into the economy.
The idea is a good one quite all right but the implementation process is rather painful. The banking system literally shut down and was strained in operations.
But helloooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! CBN Gov. Godwin Emefiele? How do I get cash to pay for tuition if I cannot access the bank from which I am expecting money?
It was clear to me that the policy wasnt going to fade soon, and that my tech course would be affected. I wasnt going to sit idle as well you know.
And neither did I get my laptop for watching movies or doing random stuff on it. I got it for tech, and the tech was it going to do!
I went on Youtube to download a number of courses on full-stack web development, and I reached out to my tech sister Esther on materials as well. I had to start somewhere right?
I still wasnt able to make the most of the materials I got. I decided to talk to Ope, the alumnus of Malhub tech institute that told me about the tech school anyway. He shared his complete web developer course with me on Udemy, and I started out on the 23rd day of February 2023! I began to follow Andrei in his timeless teachings. I came across the introduction to web development, and its history generally. I learnt things that I never paid attention to before. Learning is great you know. A whole lot of things that I used to take for granted before began to make sense to me in web development. I saw deeper applications of PC web browsers! And then, I delved into the HTML session of the course. In a matter of hours, I was able to use the Sublime text editor just well and build simple sites. I learnt about the tags and the several ways of doing things in HTML! Did you ever know the meaning of HTML? I bet you did not! Who would have paid attention to this earlier? But it does mean "Hyper-text mark-up language". If web development were to be a building structure, HTML is simply your building in building blocks alone without plastering or finishing. And of course, who builds a house without adding plastering, finishing, roofs, and electricity? Absolutely no one! There comes the baby called CSS! I have to explain this too right? CSS is simply known as the "cascading style sheets". Right from the name, you ought to know that style stands for design or style as it literally implies. The CSS makes our HTML site look more beautiful and attractive, and at the same better to interact with. The toughest part of this CSS for me was Flexbox initially. I had to do my extra digging outside of the course content on w3schools before I was able to get the full hang of Flexbox! So yes, I was done with CSS and it was time to progress. Bootstrap was the next thing for me to start, which I did anyway. But it was a tough nut to crack. I simply told myself that I was going to revise my journey for two weeks before going into Bootstrap. On Saturday, a friend came visiting at my workplace and her friend has the web development course by Dr Angela Yu right on his phone in file format! I was shocked all at once because I kept trying to purchase this course on the Udemy site but the CBN placed a number of restrictions on our cards as well. I was unable to purchase the course prior to the moment. I read somewhere that the course by Angela Yu was elaborate to follow and good for new folks in the course. Oh wait, did I forget to mention that Dr Angela Yu is the top-rated web development instructor on Udemy? Andrei is the second-rated instructor. Without wasting any bit of time, I brought out my laptop and I got the 17 GB web development course by Dr Angela Yu from this guy. I began to follow the course on that same day. It was challenging as well and has more exercises than Andreis course. I have been able to follow through easily.
Of course, I have a good foundation in Andreis course. Being able to look into web development through the eyes of two distinct instructors has been beneficial to me. I am still learning all over again. Call it my way of revising my web development course so far before delving into Bootstrap. The final session of the HTML course in Dr Angelas material brought about the motivation to write this anyway. Ive had it in my mind to document my journey into tech but I didnt know how.
I believe Ill do this more frequently now, whenever I need to unwind and get a break from coding. This feels so refreshing! Oh! I also forgot to mention that I woke to see messages from a dear OAP sister and a pal in the banking sector telling me the same thing. Cash flow can go back to normal! I was so excited when I saw the messages because this implies that I can finally resume my physical class at the tech school, just as soon as I can use the bank. Can anyone imagine what would have happened if I did not take any step back in February? Between February and now, I have learnt to use both HTML and CSS! Life is like a bomb that is ticking at times. I am just so glad that I took the bull by the horns in this full-stack web development. The journey has been great so far. I started the Dr Angela Yus course with the VS code editor. I was using the Sublime text editor in Andreis course. I have learnt to use two text editors as well within this period, and I will like to give a very brief contrast of their modes of operation. Sublime text editor can be likened to learning driving with a manual car while the VS text editor can be likened to driving an automated transmission vehicle. Talk about boilerplates or closing of tags which VS code does for you automatically, I had to learn to input them manually with Sublime text. I will forever cherish those moments with sublime text because I learnt a lot. In fact, I will recommend it to starters ahead of the VS code editor. This is just my personal preference though. The VS Code text editor definitely makes coding easier, but trust me when I say that you will learn the basics better with the sublime text editor. A good summary of all that I have learnt by following Dr Angela Yus course, coupled with my prior knowledge from the web development course by Andrei can be found in the GitHub page I made, and I will put that right here;