cover image by Gradienta on Unsplash
✨Hello!✨
My name is McKenna. This is my first post! 🎉
I have been on my coding journey for over a year now, but I have not been documenting it publicly, which I have recently realized is very valuable!
My goal moving forward is to publish a post once a week detailing what I have been working on, listening to, reading about, etc.
🗓️ Week of July 11th:
This week, I spent a lot of time finishing a responsive HTML & CSS project. I am writing a more in-depth post about that process that will hopefully be done soon. I am not completely happy with it, but I really need to move on.
🎉 My win this week
I have been taking classes with Skillcrush and I am halfway through the React class. For several weeks, I have been stuck on rendering array data models. It is so confusing! After spending some time apart from each other, I finally sat down on Friday and spent several hours going over the code. One of the Skillcrush instructors very kindly made a video for me going over it, so I watched the video and talked myself through my own code at minimum 20 times. After 3 hours, I finally started to understand it and I was able to move on to the next lesson in the class 😁 See my printed code with highlights and notes below.
🎧 What I'm listening to
Ever since attending CodeLand 2022, I have been listening to episodes of the CodeNewbie Podcast while I deliver with DoorDash. I recently listened to S20:E6 - How to create successful mobile games with Bria Sullivan. Bria created a mobile game called Boba Story. I haven't played it yet, but I downloaded it and I am READY for the cute boba! When talking about strategies she used when first learning mobile game development, Bria said she started with simple game mechanics. For example, she would try to find a super easy tutorial on making an object fall from the top of the screen.
I don't know about you, but when I'm trying to build something, I sometimes try to learn a bunch of new things instead of focusing on using what I already know. I think sometimes I tell myself that I don't know enough in order to create A, B, or C when in actuality, I know enough to create a lot of things. It's something for me to keep in mind as I continue expanding my coding skills - sometimes it is best to keep it simple.
📺 What I watched this week
source: rottentomatoes.com
The Deer King is an anime film that was released in the US last week, and my little sister and I went to watch it in theaters (we still wore masks). It was actually my first time being to the movie theater since pre-pandemic, and I must admit I missed the big screen. If you plan on watching it, it does feature a disease that wipes out a lot of people, just in case you are trying to avoid pandemic content. I really loved the found family father-daughter relationship that was the center of the story.
⭐ My goals for this week (the week of July 18th)
- Post my Week in Review - Ep 2 by Sunday, July 24th
- Complete Lessons 7 and 8 of my React course (I just finished Lesson 6)
- Post about my responsive website project
If you made it this far, THANK YOU for reading! I am new to blogs, so any (kind) feedback on wordiness or content, etc. is welcome.
Top comments (11)
Hello!
Nice to see here 🎉
See you around 😁
The Devil Wears Prada is a great background movie 👠
I have never heard of the Nintendo Radio, but I just checked it out and it's cool that they just have Nintendo game theme songs!
What is yarn?
Yarn is like
npm: a package manager. I tried this week bun (another package manager with steroids), but I feel comfortable with yarn.Oh, okay! I have heard of npm but I don't have much experience thus far with package managers. It's cool that you are trying out different software!
Aaaahhhh, how cool McKenna! ✨ ✨ ✨
It was REALLY REASSURING reading about your processing working thru a particular part of lessons with React! You got excellent support, stuck with it, took notes, used colors, and then your brain started to get it!! Very encouraging for all of the inevitable times I will hit hills and road blocks. 💪
OH yes you reminded me I want to start including references to interesting articles I read and videos!
I love how you organized it into different fun sections like what you watched this week! I love anime (yet another thing we have in common!) so I'll probably check out the Deer King after it's been out for awhile longer {:
I'm glad you liked the set up! I tend to read a lot of random things and listen to a lot of content, so I figured it would be nice to include like one or two interesting tech things that I consumed outside of my lessons. The articles you've shared with me have been great, so I'm excited for you to incorporate those resources into your posts! ⚡⚡⚡
Hi Erin!!! So, are you working at Forem, then? That's really awesome! I will certainly send memes 😋
Vox has some really wonderful podcasts in addition to their other reporting, for sure. I will have to check out Land of the Giants.
I have seen the 2014 What We Do in the Shadows movie and thought it was hilarious. I heard there was a series, but didn't realize it was already on season 4! Another thing to add to my list!
It's so good to reconnect with you!
I found your post very motivating. Also, it appears to provide you with accountability in your learning process. I am early on in my coding journey but think this idea could work for me.
Yea! The idea is to keep myself on track :) You should give it a try!
Fellow Skillcrusher here! Congratulations on your first post!
Thank you Jen!!