After I submitted my application to The Odin Project, the screen prompted me to go over some prep work to prepare me for the interview process and the course itself. I was surprised, and I kind of wish I had known about the prep work sooner, because I would have completed it all before even applying, but now I know about it and I'm working on it.
The prep work is divided into four major sections, being Web Development Basics, Web Design Basics, Software Engineering Basics, and Web Markup and Coding, in that order. In the Web Development Basics course, there's an hour long video that goes over the development workflow process using a blogging application called Simple Blog. I'm watching the video right now.
The instructor, Mr. Trautman mentioned AGILE, which is a workflow used by teams in cutting edge tech companies to move things forward at a brisk pace in team-based settings. The workflow used in the video was something like this:
1. Determine user needs.
2. Build a site mockup.
3. Break the mockup into stories, for each story:
Determine/set up the data architecture.
Build the back end.
Build the front end.
4. Refactor, iterate, and ship the site to production.
I like the organization involved in this method. When attempting a project of significance, especially when it involves teamwork, it's ideal to break the project up into manageable pieces, which can then be assigned to the various members of a team, so as to use the work inputs efficiently, preventing duplication of effort, for example.
I learned about some software called Balsamiq, which is used for creating mockups. After the mockup, we've got to prioritize which stories are crucial, which stories are nice to have, and which stories are maybes, based on the resources we can allocate to the project, and then act accordingly.
We then went over some software called Pivotal Tracker, which is used to keep track of the stories. It's looks like a project management tool. In the video, Ruby on Rails was used, which I know about, but I'm not familiar with. The instructor spent some of the time figuring out what the data structure was like. This part of the process was particularly interesting to me, as I had heard the term data structures before, but I hadn't seen it explained like this. I liked the video a lot.
The rest of the day I spent reading the other sections and the links to resources in each section. I ended today on section 14 of web development basics, and I'll be back at it again tomorrow morning.
The prep work is divided into four major sections, being Web Development Basics, Web Design Basics, Software Engineering Basics, and Web Markup and Coding, in that order. In the Web Development Basics course, there's an hour long video that goes over the development workflow process using a blogging application called Simple Blog. I'm watching the video right now.
The instructor, Mr. Trautman mentioned AGILE, which is a workflow used by teams in cutting edge tech companies to move things forward at a brisk pace in team-based settings. The workflow used in the video was something like this:
1. Determine user needs.
2. Build a site mockup.
3. Break the mockup into stories, for each story:
Determine/set up the data architecture.
Build the back end.
Build the front end.
4. Refactor, iterate, and ship the site to production.
I like the organization involved in this method. When attempting a project of significance, especially when it involves teamwork, it's ideal to break the project up into manageable pieces, which can then be assigned to the various members of a team, so as to use the work inputs efficiently, preventing duplication of effort, for example.
I learned about some software called Balsamiq, which is used for creating mockups. After the mockup, we've got to prioritize which stories are crucial, which stories are nice to have, and which stories are maybes, based on the resources we can allocate to the project, and then act accordingly.
We then went over some software called Pivotal Tracker, which is used to keep track of the stories. It's looks like a project management tool. In the video, Ruby on Rails was used, which I know about, but I'm not familiar with. The instructor spent some of the time figuring out what the data structure was like. This part of the process was particularly interesting to me, as I had heard the term data structures before, but I hadn't seen it explained like this. I liked the video a lot.
The rest of the day I spent reading the other sections and the links to resources in each section. I ended today on section 14 of web development basics, and I'll be back at it again tomorrow morning.
SUMMARY OF CODING SKILLS
Total Treehouse Points: 5,385
Treehouse Points by Subject Matter (Miscellaneous not included):
HTML: 663
CSS: 1,599
Design: 1,193
Development Tools: 747
Javascript: 1,120
Treehouse Ranking (%): "You have more total points than 94% of all students."
Treehouse Badge(s) Earned Today:
Treehouse Courses Completed:
How to Make a Website
HTML
CSS Foundations
CSS Layout Techniques
Aesthetic Foundations
Design Foundations
Adobe Photoshop Foundations
Adobe Illustrator Foundations (66% complete, switched focus from web design to web dev)
Git Basics
Introduction to Programming
Javascript Basics
Codecademy (& other) Courses Completed:
HTML and CSS (Codecademy)
Design Foundations
Adobe Photoshop Foundations
Adobe Illustrator Foundations (66% complete, switched focus from web design to web dev)
Git Basics
Introduction to Programming
Javascript Basics
Codecademy (& other) Courses Completed:
HTML and CSS (Codecademy)
Books Read or in Progress:
Completed: "Head First HTML and CSS," by E. Robson & E. Freeman
In Progress: "Eloquent JavaScript," by Marijn Haverbeke (On pg 27)
In Progress: "Head First Javascript," by Eric Freeman and Elisabeth Robson (On pg 56)
In Progress: "A Smarter Way to Learn Javascript," by Mark Myers (on pg 33)
My Progress on The Odin Project:
1. Introduction to Web Development 100% Complete
2. Web Development 101 29% Complete
3. Ruby Programming 0% Complete
4. Ruby on Rails 0% Complete
5. HTML5 and CSS3 0% Complete
6. Javascript and JQuery 0% Complete
7. Getting Hired as a Web Developer 0% Complete
Hours Spent Coding Today: 5
Total Hours Coding: 399
No comments:
Post a Comment