DEV Community: Lou Willoughby

Mental Health Awareness Week UK

Lou Willoughby — Mon, 15 May 2023 20:49:15 +0000

🌟 This week is Mental Health Awareness Week in the UK

This is something off topic from your usual developer topics but I feel is important to discuss openly.

As someone currently navigating my own mental health journey, I strongly believe in the significance of raising awareness and providing support.

Mental health troubles can manifest in various forms, often catching us off guard without any prior realization.

Here are a few strategies that have personally helped me over time:

💚 Familiarize yourself with your triggers before reaching a point of burnout.
💚 Reach out, whether it's from friends, family, or mental health charities like Mind, Samaritans, and the Mental Health Foundation, all of which have supported me throughout the years.
💚 Practice self-kindness.
💚 Discover your personal sources of comfort that can carry you through challenging times. For me, it's my panda wheat bag, a cozy blanket, watching Friends on TV, and a cup of tea. Spending some "me time" in my comfort zone truly makes a significant difference when I'm feeling down.
💚 Consider therapy, such as counseling or cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT). I personally seek counseling periodically when I sense an imbalance.

Mental health isn't something we can merely set aside and revisit later; it resides within us. Therefore, it is crucial to prioritize self-care not only during difficult times but consistently.

Feeling this way or discussing mental health does not signify weakness. We are all human beings, and acknowledging our mental well-being is an essential part of our shared experience.

The Joy of Sharing: Why Developers Should Geek Out More

Lou Willoughby — Tue, 11 Apr 2023 20:48:59 +0000

Hi, I'm Lou,

I've been coding for a while now, creating an assortment of projects from animations to landing pages, games, and responsive design. As a developer, one of the things that excites me the most is the satisfaction of creating something new and exciting.

However, one of the more mentally challenging things that I face is the lack of enthusiasm from others when I share my projects or just want to geek out about something coding related.
While I can talk about these things with my colleagues, friends, and family, most of the time, I’m returned with blank stares as they either don't quite understand or simply, don’t care.

It’s not seeking validation from others but more wanting to share the passion and excitement I feel. I think that it's great to celebrate our accomplishments ourselves but also when you see something so slick that you or someone else has made or you’ve seen online and it makes you go 🤩👀 then you look around and there’s no one you can show it to! 😓
Do you remember as a child, the thrill of bringing home a handmade project and showing it off to your parents. The same feeling of joy still exists in me today when I build something new and exciting.

By celebrating our accomplishments and sharing our passion with others, we can inspire and motivate each other to keep pushing ourselves to new heights, and let's not forget to celebrate our hard work and success along the way.

In conclusion, being a developer is challenging, but by focusing on the joy of creating and sharing our passion with others, we can overcome the challenges and continue to grow and learn in our field 🙏🏻

What have you built or learnt recently that you’ve been excited to talk about?

ChatGPT helped me build a random image generator!

Lou Willoughby — Tue, 24 Jan 2023 15:10:44 +0000

This post is about using ChatGPT to help me build a super simple image generator website. If you've not heard about ChatGPT or know what it is check it out here or continue to read my brief description below 🙂

What is ChatGPT?

I asked ChatGPT to answer this question and provide it without all the technical jargon as that goes over my head and I couldn't have written it better myself! 😅

I personally never thought i'd ever use ChatGPT, i didn't know why i would need to but there is SO MUCH hype everywhere i look. So i thought bugger it, i'll get it to help me with something simple and see how it goes..

So now you know what it is.. This is what i built using ChatGPT..

The backstory to my idea! 💭

During our fortnightly retro meetings someone is nominated to come up with a game to test the team or present something we've built, this can either be related to our work or as a side project. This meeting is my turn.

I wanted to relate my game to communication...
As a team we use Jira to plan our fortnightly SPRINTS and are carded work to complete. As these cards are written by different members of the team they can each read differently. My idea was to get the team to have to communicate to each other in their own styles and see how easy or difficult the other person has found understanding what they had to explain. As you might understand what you've said or written but can the person next to you? I think in general it’s always good to think about your own communication style as you don’t realise how often you must adapt for others in your life.

The game! 🎮

My idea was to split the team into pairs, they each have an image which they can't share with their partner and they have to describe that image to the other person so they can draw the image they're being described.
THE CATCH, they can't say exactly what the image is showing, if they have an elephant on a ball, they can't say elephant on a ball. They may say, the largest grey mammal balancing on something you'd see at a circus 😅 see how this could be challenging?

This is where the website idea came in. I wanted a random image to be shown to each person either on their mobile or laptop so i didn't have to print out multiple pictures.
I wanted a button to show the image at random out of a bunch of images i had to hand and i didn't want them to see the same one if they kept clicking the button.
Once they had been through the images they would need to start a fresh so i wanted a 'Refresh' button to start the images again.

So i put together a super simple HTML, CSS and JavaScript base project and found some random images online for this.

This is where ChatGPT came in 👩🏼‍💻

I put this idea to ChatGPT in stages, i first asked my initial idea

I would like to build a webpage with HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Where you click a button and it shows you a random image, it should not show you the same image if you press the button again

The answer it gave was perfect, not only did it write the code for the HTML, CSS and JavaScript methods, it also described to me how it works!

Great! I entered this into my project and after a few tweaks to line up with my images, it gave me a button that did exactly what i wanted!

Second stage, the refresh button

Super simple

after an image has been shown i would like a refresh button that puts the images back in the array so you can start again?

ChatGPT re wrote what it had already given me to include my new refresh button and again explained how it would work

This code creates a new array called "removedUrls" and pushes the removed image to it. Then, it creates a new event listener on the "Refresh" button, that concatenates the removedUrls array back to the imageUrls array, and empties the removedUrls array, it also resets the image src attribute to blank and hide it.

Fantastic! 2 buttons, one to show the image, one to refresh them once they have all been shown 😅

Ok, one things missing.. I want an image count, i would like to see how many images are left in my array 🤔

So my last question..

Show in the html how many images are left in the array

Great 😊 2 buttons, a counter and my random images..

As you can see, its not very pretty.. So i added my own styling to jazz up the buttons and make it mobile friendly by adding some media queries and flexing 😊

The final result! 🏆

I must say, i was very skeptical of ChatGPT to start with (probably out of my own stubbornness) but i was pleasantly surprised with the results!
The guidance it gave whilst providing the usable code was great and very informative. With a few adjustments it was exactly what i asked for and needed. I'm very excited to show this to the team 😄

Have you used ChatGPT yet? If so what for?

If you would like to see any of the source code for this you can do so here - https://github.com/Louise-Ann93/random-image-generator

The image generator - https://communication-game.netlify.app/

Please let me know your thoughts! 😊

The struggle of keeping momentum - Tips that helped me ✅

Lou Willoughby — Wed, 18 Jan 2023 21:47:35 +0000

I still see myself as a newb in the field of Development.
Although my job title is Front End Developer and I have just over 2 years on the job experience, I still have so much to learn!

Learning new languages and technologies can be challenging, but it's important to stay motivated and maintain momentum.
I’m sorry to admit after a long day coding at work, bug fixing and staring at my computer screen I struggle to code at home as mentally I just want to go home, turn on Netflix and go to bed 🥱

But even still, I didn’t get to where I am now by napping so here are a few tips that helped me that may help you:

Set clear, realistic goals:
It’s easy to get caught in the cycle of wanting to learn anything and everything! But realistically you can’t do it all at once and if you try, you will eventually burn yourself out (I have personal experience of this 🥴)
So instead, identify what you want to achieve and set specific, measurable goals for yourself. This will give you something to work towards and help you stay focused.

Break it down:
Break your goals down into smaller, manageable tasks. This will make them more manageable and help you avoid feeling overwhelmed.
With my job, we set aside 4 hours every two weeks for on the job “Learning Time”. During this time you can switch off your notifications and spend some time learning something new.
It helps us constantly learning and doing things you don’t do in your everyday.

Practice regularly:
Consistency is key when it comes to learning something new. So set aside time each day or week to practice your coding skills. And remember to take breaks!

I honestly struggled with this at the start, I practiced too much and then not at all because I was mentally exhausted. So now I work on balancing work, practice and life in a healthy way.

Learn from others:
Join online coding communities or find a mentor who can help guide you. Learning from others can be incredibly valuable and can help you stay motivated.
I found this community amazing with learning new things and others like FrontEnd Mentor and Wes Bos Training courses each have their own communities where others are also learning just like you so you can discuss things together 🙂

Celebrate your successes:
Don't forget to celebrate your successes along the way! I’m big on cheerleading my own and others successes because coding is HARD, let’s be honest for a second and so celebrating the small wins as well as the big helps recognise how far you’ve come and look at what you can achieve ✨

Remember, learning to code takes time and effort, but with dedication and perseverance, you can achieve your goals 🎉

2022 Reflection - A year in the life of Louise ✨

Lou Willoughby — Sun, 08 Jan 2023 14:57:08 +0000

As we hang up our coats for 2022 we get inundated with wrap ups and throw backs and it's a great time to think about achievements you've made, big or small! Have you ticked off anything from your bucket list? Your 1 year or 5 year goals? Are you where you thought you would be as you welcomed the year in?

This is also a big year for me as I will be saying goodbye to my 20s this year! 👀

Looking back can be quite daunting, especially if it didn't go the way you planned but could you learn from that, do you have any takeaways to help you this year?

I learnt a lot last year, work and personal and these are a few milestones I made this year:

I started the year as a Junior Developer, living in a flat share with my Tortoise Harry and was trying to create my personal brand on LinkedIn and Instagram.

🫠 Rise and Fall of personal branding.

Throughout the year I went from regularly posting on LinkedIn and instagram to not at all. Although consistency is key, i struggle with this as i can be a complete hermit and get caught up with life without thinking to talk about it. (this will be something I forever need to work on).

🏡 House move

After years of saving and working on my debt and credit score, I finally moved into my first flat!

❤️ Mental Health Journey

I personally am a highly sensitive person, i've always known this and so I went to therapy to better understand myself and my mental health. I even did training courses on how i can use this with my career, how i can make it my superpower.

⛑️ Certified training course.

I became first aid trained through a training course with my work.

🥂 I was nominated for Digital Woman of the Year and became a Digital Woman to Watch 2022.

This was such an amazing a serial moment for me! As a woman in tech i've joined a few communities to network with likeminded woman and read about their amazing journeys. So to be nominated and become a Digital Woman to Watch was incredible.

⭐️ I shed some lockdown weight!

We all have many memories from lockdown and so i won't go into it too much, it was just huge for me to finally lose some of the weight i had gained!

👩🏼‍💻 Built my first game out of JavaScript.

We started a new section in our Retro meetings where someone can share something they've done or built in or outside of work. It's been great fun and a lot of the team members have really shown their creativity and we've learnt a lot from each other. I took the opportunity to build a game out of HTML, CSS and JS. I had recently built something at work where it uses your mouse co-ordinates and so i used this to build a little maze game, it was a lot of fun 😊

🐈 Helped raise money for WoodGreen Charity (a very special charity to me).

Unfortunately last year i had to re-home my beloved cats. They mean the world to me and so was not an easy decision to make. WoodGreen Charity were amazing with helping me throughout this whole process and so i raised money for them by doing a bake sale at work. I raised close to £200 that day thanks to the help and support of my friends, family and colleagues. This year i will be raising money again by doing a 99 mile walk in February 👏🏻

🎉 I learnt animations

Another really fun thing i learnt last year was CSS animations and transitions. I initially built and shared something in the Retro of an animated scene showing the difference between animations and transitions. (i'll write a separate post for this as it was great fun to build). I then went on to build more animations, a walking man, a tiny violin... Its been a lot of fun.

🍝 Cooked my first roast dinner.

And it was very tasty! 🤩

🎉 Promoted to Front End Developer and Deputy to the Head of Development.

This was such an incredible moment for me. As a career this is where i want to go, i fell in love with front end development and to finally lose the Junior title was such an achievement as part of this journey. Then to be made deputy to my team lead was an even bigger shock but excitement! He has supported me throughout my journey and has been a great mentor so to be trusted with this role was and still is an honour.

🎉 Top Author 2022

I ended the year receiving an email from Dev.to about being a Top Author on DEV in 2022, i was not expecting that 😅 i absolutely loved the little sticker gift, thank you 🥰 i may not have written in a while but i still love to come here and read other peoples posts, i learn a lot from here so thank you all 🙂

I ask you to join me and raise a glass to 2022, the highs and the lows. I look forward to 2023 and what it brings 🥂

I’ve been building animations 👀😅

Lou Willoughby — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 22:44:36 +0000

So, it’s been a while..
My last post I built my very first game out of JavaScript. Since then I took some personal time, I had a birthday, held a charity fundraiser and continued to learn and build things..

I’ve been working on my responsive development and within this course I learnt about animations.. of course I’ve touched on them before, keyframes, easing-in, easing-out blah blah but this time I was like damn! Animations, why did I breeze past this last time! 👀

I love front end development, the possibilities with HTML and CSS Styling alone 🤩 it’s like painting or drawing but in code.

So I recently built 2 animations, one is a scene, there’s a cheeky animation to begin with and then it’s interactive after that, the second is a silly tiny violin inspired to me by an annoying friend who I told one day I’d build him a tiny violin for his troubles 😂

My Animated Landscape
It’s browser or minimum landscape tablet only just because it’s an animated scene, it’s built in HTML, CSS and some jQuery. The images are free SVGs from a google search.

Animated Landscape

My Tiny Violin
It works all devices, so it’s mobile friendly 🙂
It’s built in just HTML and CSS.
The images are SVGs and the music is also from a google search but is credited in the footer.

Tiny Violin

I had a TON of fun building these, I hope you enjoy them also! 😅

The code for them is linked on the webpages, feel free to have a nose

I built my first JS game! 🎉

Lou Willoughby — Sun, 15 May 2022 21:22:09 +0000

I built my first Maze JavaScript game

I used;

Vue.Js framework,
JavaScript,
CSS

I've recently been learning DOM manipulation and so I decided to put my knowledge to practice and built a little maze game using the skills I learnt and also learnt new ones along the way.

It's only small and silly BUT i'm super chuffed with it. There are definitely things I could improve on or do differently so if you do have a look at the code, I am always open to constructive feedback as it will only help me code better.

A few things I used to make my Maze;

To make the maze itself I used CSS Grid;

This is something i'm still new to using but I felt it was the best way to get an even 6x6 grid.
I used mouseover effects to make the game more interactive, when you hit the 'wall' it shows this by turning red;
You only win by going passed start, if you try to go to the finish via another entry it tells you that's cheating!
There may be a little surprise or two along the way 👀

I hope you enjoy this as much as I had fun building it, you can win it's not a trick 😉

GitHub Code: https://github.com/Louise-Ann93/mazegame
Game: https://mazegamepractice.netlify.app/

Enjoy 😊

Preventing burnout 😴

Lou Willoughby — Wed, 04 May 2022 22:18:23 +0000

It’s not just people with mental health troubles that are effected with burnout. It can happen to anyone and everyone in their lifetime.

What is Burnout?

Burnout is a form of exhaustion, it’s a result of prolonged mental, emotional and/or physical stress.

Life can get busy, working, training, helping others, or things happening in our personal lives. Sometimes, we get too busy and forget to take a step back and rest. This can cause burnout.

You may not even know you’re burning yourself out until it’s too late and by that point you can start to feel unproductive, exhausted, hopeless and even unwell.

How it can happen

It can happen when you’re feeling emotionally drained, stressed and overwhelmed. You feel like you can’t keep up with everything around you.

I know first hand when starting out as a beginner in development you can get swept up in the excitement of learning.

You might be,

Taking on too much too soon,
Not feeling appreciated,
Under a lot of pressure at work to learn something or get a project finished on time,
Comparing yourself to others..

It can be one or multiple things that may not feel like much at the time but slowly it can cause you to burn yourself out.

It’s important in these times to remember you’re only human.

The Stigma

There’s unfortunately a lot of stigma around mental health and so it can be hard to admit when you’re struggling, when you need help or to even allow yourself to step away and take a break.

In the development world not everyone understands what it is to be a developer/programmer so trying to explain that it is a mentally tiring job can be hard.

Dealing with burnout

Understanding what causes your burnout is a form of self care, at first you may not know how or why it happened but knowing your triggers can really help with prevention.

Self Check-ins

We’re really bad at checking in with ourselves, being on the go and just getting on with everything. It’s good to sometimes just take a moment to stop and ask yourself, are you ok?

Speak to your manager

If you’re in a position to do so, speak with your manager or team lead. It’s good to be open and honest with how you’re feeling and your workload. You can then discuss how to manage it better and move forward.
You’re no use to your team or manager when you’re not at your 100% so it’s best to work together during these times so then you’ll be back on your a game sooner.

Are you sleeping enough?

When you don’t get enough sleep you may feel more stressed, anxious or tired. Making sure you get enough sleep is super important.

Get Support

Speak with someone you trust, it could be a colleague, friend or family member or a community you may be part of. Talking to someone about how you’re feeling and even asking for help is a great way to overcome what’s troubling you. Let others support you during this time.

If you don’t have any of the above, there are some great mental health charities you can speak with or even look on their website for advice, two that I’ve used personally are

Samaritans - https://www.samaritans.org/how-we-can-help/
Mind - https://www.mind.org.uk/

Do something you enjoy

Sometimes it’s easy to get caught up in everything so taking some time to yourself if you can to have a cup of tea, read a book, play a game, listen to a podcast or go for a walk. These things can really help focus on something else, something you enjoy doing, it can really help your mood.

Conclusion

I know the above might seem like a lot but I know from experience how easy burnout can happen and so I wanted to share this with you to hopefully help or prevent it from happening to you.

Finding a life, work balance is very important. I know it’s easy to get sucked into what we do but it’s very important to take breaks.

Set a timer every hour to just stretch your legs for 5 minutes,

Schedule learning time in your day where you can focus purely on that during that time and only that time.

Most importantly look after yourself and listen, your body always knows when things are too much.

The big debate!?

Lou Willoughby — Mon, 02 May 2022 09:53:08 +0000

I see and hear this a lot, HTML and CSS are not considered ”real” languages.

I understand this is because they only determine the structure of a website and don’t give a set of instructions per say like other languages. When you google this however there are many different articles each giving their own opinion on the subject. Is this all actually a matter of opinion or is there a straight up fact to say yes or no?

I’ve seen many memes about this over time and arguments on social media but never gave it a real thought, it was only when I stumbled across someone posting their CV/portfolio website online that said they know HTML and CSS and someone told them not to, this made me question why? Why can’t someone proudly say they know HMTL and CSS, it’s a skill you learn as a developer, maybe even the first you learn in fact.

They may be basic but you still have to know how to write them correctly, for one reason accessibility and yes correct structure of your website. CSS is also another kettle of fish, there’s so much to learn about CSS! I know there’s frameworks out there that do a lot of this for you but if you’re writing vanilla you need to know your stuff.

What’s your thoughts? 👀🤔

How do you keep organised? 🤔

Lou Willoughby — Sat, 30 Apr 2022 13:12:17 +0000

One of my issues are I struggle to put ideas down or where to begin to plan my time so when I’m not feeling coding I love researching and trying different applications to find one I work well with and enjoy. Today I’m checking out invisionapp, so far it looks good, they have many templates to help you get started 🙂🤞🏻

What do you use to help you plan?

Developer tattoos 👀

Lou Willoughby — Thu, 28 Apr 2022 09:35:06 +0000

I was writing a post about my development journey yesterday and it made me wonder, does anyone else have any developer tattoos? 🤔

Mine is a simple "Hello World" that I got after I was promoted to Junior, it was the first thing I ever learnt and it was the start of this incredible journey ⭐️

I’d love to hear your stories? 🙂

Finding my spark ⭐️ We all start from somewhere..

Lou Willoughby — Wed, 27 Apr 2022 21:58:23 +0000

Starting out as a developer isn’t easy, you have many ups and downs, late nights and lots of coffee! You make many mistakes, feel frustrated and google becomes your bestfriend 🥴

I’m a self taught developer, like many I don’t have any fancy college degrees, everything I know is from online articles, courses, YouTube videos, help from other developers and lots of practice and there’s still SO much more to learn.

I’ve been developing as a career now for 1 1/2 years and only recently do I feel like I found my spark, my niche and it’s an amazing feeling.

Here’s how that happened..

I started out on the development team as I moved over from being a data analyst. I worked mainly with sql and organised/managed the data for different teams and one day the developer lead offered me a place on his team. I had little/basic knowledge of html and css at that point and I was then at the start of being trained as a full stack developer to work on our software. I was told all this stuff I needed to learn, JavaScript, php, laravel, vue.js, tailwind css as well as learning and working on the software daily. This was an incredible opportunity but also what had I gotten myself into! 👀🥴

Deving has always been something I wanted to learn and do, I remember the first time I made a page say ‘Hello World!’ (Which I now have as a tattoo after my promotion to junior) it was the most exciting feeling! 👏🏻 But then after that it became very stressful, the feeling of being an absolute newbie on a team of experienced developers! Learning so many things at once as well as training courses, all this during the pandemic. It was terrible for my mental health and I eventually burnt myself out. It didn’t feel fun, it felt like a lot of pressure to get good fast!

I remember being asked what do I want to make of this development career, where do I want to be and I just remember saying I have no idea..

It then started when I was given a task to turn a form we had into a modal/form with different fields, tick boxes, buttons, it all needed to receive certain data, change it and then post it on submission that then triggered certain events depending on what you chose. A lot of the backend code was there I just needed to build the new ui. I remember once I finished I felt on top of the world! Watching it all come to life and work! I did that, I built that! 🥳

The more frontend I worked on the more I felt excited and this passion inside of me! Watching these creations coming to life on screen 😍
So I decided to sit down with my manager and we discussed me just pursuing a career in frontend development, I found it’s what I loved doing and I wanted to take on more frontend projects. I thought I’d be in trouble but he was very supportive 🙂

I wanted to try my hand at practicing side frontend projects at home as something different to the day to day but I soon realised I wasn't a designer I’m a developer and had major creative block, this did make me question my skills and did I really know what I was doing!? But at work I continued taking on more ui projects and focusing just on frontend development training and I found this love for JavaScript and Vue.js !! 😍 Even though I still felt intimidated by my colleagues (being the only female on the team didn’t help) I no longer felt this stress of needing to learn a billion things, I felt like I could focus more.

It really got me wanting to do more, learn more, so one night I was googling courses to help me with my training and I stumbled upon frontend mentor a place that sets you challenges on building projects that they’ve designed and it really tests your skills (I’ve written an article previously on my first experience 🙂).

Then one day at work I saw my manager on his dev.to page. What was this!? I’d been really struggling trying to network with other developers and this was dedicated to that. So I made my own account and I found I loved reading other peoples stories and advice 😊
I remember I came across one post about building your personal brand and I felt inspired so I wanted to get more involved in the community and I started networking on my LinkedIn, my Instagram, I created my own profile specifically to document my own progress and network with other developers. The more I got involved the more I felt this passion, this spark in my work ⭐️

Since finding my love for frontend development, I’ve accomplished so much more! Since deciding to focus on one thing I no longer feel this pressure to learn a million things. I feel more organised, more guided. Don’t get me wrong it’s still HARD work, I personally struggle with mental health and lack of confidence and there’s so much I still need to learn and I get overwhelmed with ideas but I know what I want to do now. I found my spark 🤩

I’ve since worked on many ui projects at work, I’ve been working on frontend mentor challenges in my spare time but I also understand balance more, I try to make sure I take time away from it all when I need and not let it consume me. I’m incredibly grateful for all the help and support from my boss, my colleagues and the wonderful dev community.

I now have an answer for where I see myself taking my career.. I am a frontend developer, this is just the beginning but one day i want to build incredible things and help others find their spark.