DEV Community: April Cook

The Journey to Competence

April Cook — Tue, 12 Nov 2019 15:23:01 +0000

What a ride!
I remember on my first day I read a very helpful article that gave me the forewarning of the learners journey and the changes in confidence one experiences on their way to competency (described in the image below).
Before I began designing my own web page, I read this with the breath of gratitude and even a little skepticism that I wouldn’t likely struggle much, after all, my reading comprehension is pretty decent (insert nervous and inappropriate laughter here).
Boy, was I underestimating my ability to struggle! At first I started out with a mess, which I have to admit is very typical of how I generally begin things.
I learned a lot along the way, but ultimately decided to begin fresh and give myself a better chance to learn the course work.
For those of you teaching yourselves code the article describes the curve as beginning with the hand holding honeymoon where you're learning your tools and a basic foundation of knowledge. After this is the second phase, where you move slowly but quite obviously to the cliff of confusion, where you begin to realize things are much more difficult outside of the hand holding honeymoon. Then comes the Desert of Despair that takes you down path after path of working solutions and you are thirsty for solid resources which can lead you down useless rabbit holes. After this is the final and fourth phase, the Upswing of Awesome. The path out of the desert to the relief of a deeper understanding of application development, even if the code is brittle and easily broken.
I am currently still in the hand holding honeymoon phase, but I am very happy I made the choice to start over with my code. I feel I have a much better understanding and more confidence in my ability to move forward on this Adventure in Learning.

I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that
I may learn how to do it. -Picasso

When I go Inside

April Cook — Fri, 08 Nov 2019 21:15:55 +0000

When I Go Inside

I see the universe, expansive and inclusive

When I go inside I see the vast openness of space, encompassing all as one

When I go inside I see ever changing bodies in motion, moving infinitely around

When I go inside I see landscapes and oceans, shifting with moon and tide and rain and sunshine

When I go inside I see beings of light, so radiant and collective yet individual

When I go inside I see landscapes and oceans, shifting with moon and tide and rain and sunshine

When I go inside I see ever changing bodies in motion, moving infinitely around

When I go inside I see the vast openness of space, encompassing all as one

When I go inside I see the universe, expansive and inclusive

When I go Inside

HTML Hot Seat!

April Cook — Fri, 18 Oct 2019 19:46:48 +0000

My Blog

October 18 2019

Okay, I've been in the hot seat for a few days now, and I am FOR SURE sharing this experience with all of you!
I have had a rewarding learning experience and an uncomfortable one, and I find great value in both of those things.
My ability to stretch out and reach past my comfort zone has been surprising and has helped fuel my confidence to move forward.
I built my own small business website through godaddy a few years back but only dealt with the user end.
I had the silly misconception that experience would help me build my own personal portfolio.
It did not.
I was paralyzed with a gazillion pages of code when I copied my pretty, easy-to-build web code into my VS Code.
Ok, so apparently I am diving into the middle of the ocean here, time to learn to float.
I have always had a way of learning by making the biggest mess first and working thru it.
"Good", I thought, as I was trying to highlight and delete a million lines of code that belonged to TWO pictures, "I found a way to do this in true April Spirit after all"
And onward I marched.
I poured through the code, barely comprehending only a fraction of what I observed, and I made the changes I KNEW I had to make, while also knowing this would only be the beginning of that.
Now I have a site, styled the way I want it styled, and I have a heck of a learning project ahead of me!
I find myself wondering, Should I start over?
Is this too big to start out with?
Am I even doing this to curriculum standards?
While I know, this is likely far more complicated than just writing my own simple code, I have gained such a great sense of understanding thru this process that I am practically giddy.
With something I started basically knowing NOTHING, to now, actually starting to have ideas of how I can make something work has really tickled my learning bone.
I am so grateful to those businesses and individuals that took their time this week to reach out to us, give us the Oklahoma Tech intro and extend their hands to our learning process.
I am forever thankful, and look forward to being able to offer my own time and experience to future CTRL+SHIFT Code School students, and people coming into the tech world in general.

My Git/Github Learning Adventures

April Cook — Thu, 10 Oct 2019 14:46:33 +0000

Learning Git and Github have been challenging and fun.
I have found both the confidence and knowledge to move forward and I would like to share some of that journey here.
When I began this class I didn't know anything about coding or really anything about programming at all.
Other than the limited knowledge I've acquired from my oldest son who is in the IT field, I was beginning this adventure with very limited knowledge.
At first my confidence in my ability was non-existent, but each hour and day brings more knowledge and more confidence in my own ability in the IT industry.
This week we focused on learning Git and Github and the challenge did not disappoint! I did multiple exercises fully before I even started to understand what I was doing.
It felt a little frustrating at first and that frustration built monumentally all the way up until one day it all just clicked and suddenly made sense.
WHAT A SENSE OF RELIEF!
Everything I had done up until then suddenly felt familiar and I was able to begin helping my peers and gaining momentum.
When I look back on some of the frustration I was feeling I feel blessed to have the ability to work past it and grow as a person.
Let's take a look at some of the things I've learned on my Git/Github journey!
First, if you're unfamiliar with VCS and how it works this can be quite daunting, but my advice is just keep moving forward because it gets easier!
Git is the command line tool, and GitHub is an open source repository hosting site that facilitates things like work flow and collaboration.
A repository is a a central location in which data is stored and managed, with both local and remote accessibility, giving users the ability to modify and collaborate seamlessly.
When working in the Local repository a user has the ability to pull changes from the remote repository, work and modify locally,then push changes back to the remote with record of change.
GitHub uses something called Github Flavored Markdown (GFM), an easy-to-read/write syntax for formatting plain text.
GFM is a strict superset of CommonMark,and content not specified on the original CommonMark Spec are known as extensions.
The design goal of MarkDown's formatting syntax is to make it as readable as possible.
The idea is that a Markdown-formatted document should be publishable as-is, without looking marked up with tags and formatting instructions.
The functionality of Github as an open source is to help programmers and coders collaborate and contribute to each others codes.
It hosts your source code projects in a variety of different programming languages and keeps track of the various changes made to every iteration.
The basic commands used are user friendly, creating an easy environment to work with multiple team members on multiple facets of the project at the same time.
I am still trying to figure out the push and pull operations, and look forward to the "click" that I know is coming, with perseverance.
Onward I march into the Git fray.

“You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great.” –Zig Ziglar

Attitude of Gratitude

April Cook — Wed, 02 Oct 2019 20:43:02 +0000

Oct. 2 2019

I am so happy to be here, and feel so blessed to have this opportunity.
In my first blog I will discuss gratitude as being one of the most important aspects of my healing journey that has ultimately lead me here, to new blessings.
My greatest blessing is my greatest lesson, and for that I am forever grateful.
Some of my greatest trials have led me on the path I am on today.
I have begun the wonderful healing process of accepting my past experiences as exactly what I needed to bring me to the blessings of today.
Every day I will remember to feel that gratitude and share it with others.

“Gratitude is the wine of the soul. Go on. Get drunk!” — Rumi