My first real programming experience was when I was in my first year in Secondary school. We started Scratch programming. Those of you that don’t know it’s a drag and drop GUI with blocks generally used for 2D games.
I was playing around with scratch for two years in school. Naturally, I wanted to know what scratch was capable of, push it to its limits and found many amazing projects the scratch community was working on. Very soon after taking apart many scratch projects and watching many YouTube videos, I got that feeling all programmers get: 'you feel as though you can do anything' until you come across a difficult concept, you start looking into it, and then it hits you. You realise you haven't even scratched the surface of what's possible. This is where my programming journey began; I started enjoying solving problems and making algorithms.
Python
About two years later I was in my first 'ICT' lesson; we began covering python. Being that age, I was instantly impressed by 'print' statements and 'inputs'. I went through a lot of practice in lessons, constantly solving problems and making little 'so called chat apps'. I watched many videos of people doing amazing things with python and wanted to be able to that them myself in the future. Over this year I solved many algorithm problems and tried to get to grips with syntax along with how the language worked. Right at the end of the year was my first introduction to Web Development. I learned about the features of a site and finally how to build a basic one with Dreamweaver; as usual, the intrigued mind of mine clicked over to the code tab. Overwhelmed and confused I quickly switched back to the dragging and dropping elements into tables (yes at that time we still used HTML tables to organise content). I made an information website about types of Turtles and Tortoises (if you're interested you can find an improved version I made in 2019 on my portfolio)
First Steps in HTML
Now a year later my GCSEs commenced. With programming being a key part of my computer science course, I had to learn more than the basics of Python I had to learn the flow of the language. My teacher introduced me to SoloLearn (a great website to learn the basics of a language). After completing the course and creating many practice algorithms; I was confident with the language. This was the year I looked back over the HTML code from Dreamweaver and began delving into the ins and outs of a web page. I turned back to SoloLearn, I did the HTML and CSS course and began practising in creating simple pages.
I watched many great Web Dev YouTube Creators:
• Dev Ed
• Kevin Powell
• Web Dev Simplified
• Traversy Media
• Design Course
Learning a lot over the years from these amazing creators I created many practice sites. One thing I did to keep my passion going is look at amazing websites which use features that I can't now do with my current skill set. I'd attempt to recreate the page and learn about how it works. I continued expanding knowledge over the year watching many videos and continued playing around with CSS properties. My message to you:
"If you have a passion for something keep at it, keep practising and always maintain a thirst for knowledge" because as Francis Bacon once said: "Knowledge is power"
Thank you for taking the time to read.
✨If you would like to follow my day to day development journey be sure to check my Instagram.
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