DEV Community: whippet-code

Thoughts of a noob web dev.

whippet-code — Fri, 17 Mar 2023 09:00:05 +0000

Friday thought of the day -
"How many todo apps does it take to change a lightbulb......?"

I like to move it move it!

whippet-code — Thu, 16 Mar 2023 11:03:43 +0000

Are you a web developer who spends hours sitting in front of a computer? If so, you know how easy it can be to neglect your physical health. That's why I've been using indoor cycling with the Zwift platform as a way to stay active while working on my projects.

Indoor cycling offers a great way to stay fit, but the Zwift platform takes it to a whole new level. It's a social way to work out, connecting you with other cyclists from all over the world. Plus, the gamified aspect of the platform keeps me motivated to reach my goals and achieve new personal bests.

I love the data you get after a ride, that's a great motivator for me. Plus you can get a really good workout in an hour whilst catching up with all those podcasts you have lined up . . . . .

So if you're looking for a fun and effective way to incorporate exercise into your daily routine, give indoor cycling with Zwift a try. Your body (and your mind) will thank you! #indoorcycling #Zwift #webdevelopment #healthylifestyle

Hyperiondev - Web Dev bootcamp - day 5

whippet-code — Fri, 09 Dec 2022 16:01:51 +0000

I hear the weekend calling

Final live lecture for the week. Another marathon session but the number of unrelated questions is dropping or at least being fielded to the end of the session.
Clocking in at just of 12hrs "live" teaching time this week, plus the 15min mini-video tutorials for each Task. Add in the pdf teaching & task sheets, then the time solving the tasks. This may be down as a part-time bootcamp but I'd struggle to see many full-time workers being able to cope with this workload unless they're going to dedicate the weekend to study.
Being freelance myself I had already snagged myself a couple of weeks free-time to get a good head start on this course and boy oh boy am I glad I did.

Today I've knocked out tasks 9 & 10.

Task 9 - for loops.
Everyone's favourite flavour, we all love a good for loop to get things going right.

Task 10 - Defensive programming / Debugging.
Intro to error types and some basic ways of dodging the most common early errors (syntax, runtime & logical). Nothing too advanced just read the messages, check the code, check variable names, spelling etc.

So far no rubber ducks.

Hyperiondev - Web Dev bootcamp - Day 4

whippet-code — Thu, 08 Dec 2022 21:21:21 +0000

Settling in

Getting used to the flow of things now. Lecture length and how to organise life around the work required to complete task etc.

Live lecture today ran much smoother. Two hours and plenty of basic info on loops & controlling the flow of programs in JS.

Task 7 - Build Your Brand 1
The first career focused task/section. A great intro of working with linkedIn, keeping a list of potential contacts. Setting career goals and focusing on the steps required to progress through the bootcamp but also build a professional network and portfolio.
Looking forward to more of these career resources and working with the careers team at Hyperiondev.

Task 8 - More loops - While, do..while.
Intro to whole loops and effective ways of utilising them with while(true) statements. Code challenges included the favourite "Is string a palendrome?" Everyone loves this one right.

Last lecture of the week tomorrow. Getting good feedback on my submitted work so far, I've got myself nicely ahead of the live lectures as I've covered most of this basic JS stuff previously on codecademy. However I'm expecting to slow down once the going heads into new territory for me.

Hyperiondev Web Dev bootcamp - day 3

whippet-code — Wed, 07 Dec 2022 12:01:15 +0000

Onwards

So after the three hour lecture yesterday I'm getting close to popping a message over to the team to request that the tutors attempt to stay on topic for the lecture as advertised. I imagine after this week things should settle down some but yesterday I just ended up muting the tab and carried on doing the exercises I was on.
I think this is a bit of a problem with the way this bootcamp is run. We have all the coursework already so if the urge takes you, you could romp on through it. Problem being that when you get stuck you're going to have quite a wait until the relevant lecture takes place. I'm just finishing up task 6 and the scheduled lecture today is covering task 3. I know of a few students who are already into tasks 13 upwards.
I'm fine with this so long as they don't start asking questions about where they are in the lectures that aren't meant to be covering that info. We have the option for 1:1 mentor calls for such situations.

So, mini-rant over.
Task 5 - Further conditionals (Switch statements)
Quick and easy lecture covering the usage and syntax of switch statements. Followed by a couple of exercises to make sure we understand if / if else, switch statements and nesting those together to solve logic problems.

I like that the resources we are given don't fully explain how to achieve our solutions and that we need to do a little further digging around ourselves (with correct citing of info used). It gets us used to doing just that very thing when we get stuck later on in our journey.

Live Lecture later, let's hope it's a little shorter today.

Then I'm on with Task 6 - Our first capstone project, which is building a JS temperature convertor. Nothing ground breaking but a good recap of everything taught so far.

Until tomorrow friends.

Hyperiondev bootcamp - Day 2

whippet-code — Tue, 06 Dec 2022 14:24:43 +0000

Welcome to day 2

Overnight I got my first two code reviews back and all was signed off as correct. Also overnight came a "progress" email. This one was a little passive aggressive in it's tone but I guess they're trying to make sure everyone is getting used to putting in the hours as in all reality this is a self-motivated course.

Task 3 - Intro variables
Getting used to variable types in JS. Learning how to type cast them, smoosh them together and do basic maths operations.

Task 3 - Intro to control structures.
If, else & if-else statements. Getting into a bit of control within programs. Nothing groundbreaking but a nice, slow, brick upon brick build of basic programming.

Lecture 2 - Based on Task 2 work.
So here is one of the "issues" with the bootcamp so far. The lectures are running one a day this week, this is great for those having zero experience with code but there are many in the lectures who are romping ahead and then asking questions related to where they are in the work which aren't related to the lecture. This is tending to make the lectures over-run and I imagine putting a bit of stress on those not pushing so far on. I feel that if they released the course work a couple of weeks at a time, this would;

a. help to prevent this as much.

b. keep people used to working consistently rather than starting all guns blazing and then dropping off as the going gets tough and they are way ahead of the live lectures.

So onwards and upwards. Overall feel of quality of the learning and course resources is okay, I've seen much slicker and more pleasing methods of teaching JS. However the way we are running things is a great into to being more self-reliant and opposed to doing all our work on a web based IDE which is all set up to make our life easy.

Hyperiondev - Web Dev bootcamp- Day 1

whippet-code — Mon, 05 Dec 2022 13:47:27 +0000

Day One
So it begins. The link to a shared folder in dropbox which will serve as my go between for code reviews, lecture notes and most other data arrives.
All signed up to the Hyperiondev dashboard so I can join live lectures and submit code for review or organise a 1:1 mentor chat.
So far all seems good.
Signed up for the five live lectures this week and then started my way through the first couple of task.

Task 1 - Pseudocode

A nice gentle intro into the thinking process of solving code problems. Get given a problem and then "describe" your solution step by step.
This one had a few tasks to complete where I had to "design" algorithms to solve simple input/output needs, order a list & find if a number input is a prime number or not.

The it was an "interactive" way of making sure we're all aware of not copying. The task being to read the info provided on types of plagiarism and then to explain our understanding whilst ensuring we reference out sources.
Sneaky!

Task 2 - Lets get coding.

This "intro" to Javascript felt a little clunky if I'm honest. I've done a few free courses on JS before and they way it's introduced here felt awkward. However it did introduce using Chrome dev tools for inspecting the page (and console access), plus it got us to install VSCode and Node.js.
Nice and handy having VSCode linked via dropbox so all work is saved to your student folder ready for submission.

Live Lecture -

So after a little hiccup from the hyperiondev team we got going in the afternoon with lecture one. This one hosted by Pieter went though the Task 1 info. So here we went through the concept and usage of pseudocode.

So there we go, day one done. I've submitted T1 & T2 for review and attended my first lecture. Initial feelings so far is despite quite a few teething problems admin-wise everything seems good.

Hyperiondev - Web Development bootcamp. Dec 22

whippet-code — Fri, 02 Dec 2022 16:46:44 +0000

Here begins an idea of tracking my progress through a bootcamp

The concept being that writing an explanation of what I'm learning will in turn re-enforce concepts and lessons learnt.

So as of Mon 5th December I intend to log my progress day upon day through the online bootcamp provided by hyperiondev.

I was lucky to get a fully paid scholarship for this education at a time I was considering my of the other bootcamps out there.

My coding background - Having toyed with code over the past two or so years, drifting from tutorial to tutorial, freecodecamp to codecademy, youtube channel to dev blog post. I've gathered a rough bunch of understanding of html, CSS, JS, python, flask, SQLite. However whenever it comes to actually building something my house of cards quickly tumbles to the ground.
I even made it through the rather excellent Harvard CS50x course. Yet despite feeling like a superhero at the end of it, I still struggled to implement what I thought I'd learnt.
SO it's thime for a more focused and mentored track. One which I hope will reaffirm my knowledge and build out from that foundation. Also one which will challenge me to reach out to employers, to network and to see what skills and projects the real world needs. Here I feel is the real benefit of the bootcamp experience.

So let us see.