Remaking my first childhood project - a virtual pet fish

#beginners #webdev #javascript #programming

When I started learning how to code, my first language was Microsoft QBasic. I was learning on an old IBM 286 that my dad found in storage at the place he worked and I had decided that I was going to make a pet fish. It would swim, it would eat, it would play paper, rock, scissors with me...Basically I wanted a tamagotchi.

I got to a point where an animation would play of the little ascii fish swimming from left to right and then you would choose what you wanted to do. I learned how to make a little animated slice of bread that would disappear. I learned how to make the fish "randomly" swim up or down as it moved across the screen. And that's as far as I got before the computer completely failed and I lost the whole thing. But that project has always been in the back of my mind.

So I am starting it again. But differently.

I am going to make it in HTML, CSS and Javascript. It will have the little aquarium animation. It will have the bread eating animation. It will play paper, rock, scissors. But it will do so much more.

I am still working out what I want to do with it in general. I just know that 12 year old me would be really happy to see this project come to completion after losing it so many years ago.

This is basically where I am going to talk through what I have learned, what I am doing, how I am doing it. I want to make a record of the process to give myself the chance to solidify my learning, but also I wanted to be able to show this to other people who might be interested. They say that the best way to learn is to teach, so that's my plan.

}0D