Wednesday, March 16, 2016

Day 207: Stopping Harvard CS50, doing Stanford Computer Science 101 instead to complete UT Coding Bootcamp Pre-Requisite Quickly and then Re-Prioritize Web Development

All right, working on week 1 of the Harvard course.  Taking down notes from the lecture.

A compiler gets us from source code to object code, which is 1's and 0's.

We're going over some C samples.   They remind me a lot of JavaScript.  

I'm learning about the IDE we'll be using for the course, called CS50IDE.

In C, 

#include <stdio.h>

gives us access to a library of pre-made functions in C.  The professor entered it above:

int main(void)
{
  printf("hello, world\n");
}

NOTE:

Okay, I'm going deeper into the lecture and it keeps going deeper into C (the programming language).  Now, I have nothing against learning C, but I have to optimize my time, and I'd like to improve my skills with responsive layouts (flexbox, bootstrap, and skeleton), port my portfolio over from codepen to github, learn React, study prototypal inheritance more, and then dive into the back end.  

I made the mistake when I was 18 and in college of letting others dictate my education, and I have to learn from those mistakes and de-prioritize this course.  My time is finite, and at this juncture, it's better to spend my time upgrading the skills I already have than learning something brand new from scratch (C), which I may never use in my career.  I'm sure it's great to know C, just like it's great to know French, and Chinese, and Spanish (I actually do know Spanish), but it's even greater to know the languages and technologies which I need to know to launch a startup, or that are listed in job ads, at a high enough level to get a return on my significant time investment.  It's simply a matter of priorities, so I have to make the call.

It's tough, sometimes you want to keep going with what you've already started, but the thing is, if you make a wrong decision, you have to be able to recognize it and turn the train around as soon as possible.  That's what this is.  I've got so much web dev momentum, and this course is bringing it to a crashing halt, at the exact same time that I have a long list of things I need to do to get to the next level!

So, I'm stopping this course, I want to be a web developer, and I need to be very careful with what I invest my time into, and C does not give me as high a return investment as upgrading other parts of my intellectual portfolio.

That said, I'm supposed to finish at least one of three courses that were given to me as an option (the Harvard course was one of them), so I'm going to take the Stanford Computer Science course today, as it's about 10 hours long, instead of Harvard's 80 hours plus course (some people said they spent over 50 hours on a single problem in that course).  I simply have many other areas where 50 hours would yield a greater return on investment.

All right, I feel confident in that decision.

Now, let me knock out this Stanford class and get back to web development!

All right, this course is very basic, I'm knocking out the exercises...

Note that to make gray, all three RGB values should be the same.  Black and white, the two ends of grey, are 000 and 255, 255, 255, respectively.  

Okay, the course is 6 weeks, and I'm on week 3 now.

SUMMARY OF CODING SKILLS 
Books:                                                                                               Status
"Head First HTML and CSS," by E. Robson & E. Freeman                      Complete
"A Smarter Way to Learn JavaScript," by Mark Myers                          Complete
"HTML and CSS," by Jon Duckett                                                        Complete
"JavaScript and JQuery," by Jon Duckett                                            Complete
Team Treehouse (Front End Web Dev Track Complete):                    Status
How to Make a Website                                                                     Complete
HTML                                                                                                Complete
HTML Forms                                                                                      Complete
HTML Tables                                                                                     Complete
HTML Video and Audio                                                                       Complete
CSS Foundations                                                                                Complete
CSS Basics                                                                                         Complete
CSS Layout Techniques                                                                      Complete
CSS Layout Basics                                                                              Complete
CSS Selectors                                                                                     Complete
Responsive Layouts                                                                            Complete
CSS Flexbox Layout                                                                            Complete
Git Basics                                                                                          Complete
Console Foundations                                                                          Complete
Introduction to Programming                                                              Complete
JavaScript Basics                                                                               Complete
JavaScript Loops, Arrays, & Objects                                                   Complete
AJAX Basics                                                                                       Complete
JQuery Basics                                                                                    Complete
Interactive Web pages with JavaScript                                               Complete
Object-Oriented JavaScript                                                                Complete 
Accessibility                                                                                      Complete
Website Optimization                                                                        Complete
Front End Performance Optimization                                                  Complete
Aesthetic Foundations                                                                        Complete                 
Design Foundations                                                                            Complete  
Adobe Photoshop Foundations                                                            Complete
Adobe Illustrator Foundations                                                      66% Complete

Other Courses:                                                                                     Status
HTML and CSS (Codecademy)                                                               Complete
Introduction to Web Dev (The Odin Project)                                         Complete
Web Dev 101 (The Odin Project)                                                    33% Complete

Free Code Camp (FCC)                                                                           Status
1. Get Started with Free Code Camp                                                     Complete
2. HTML5 and CSS                                                                                 Complete
3. Responsive Design with Bootstrap                                                      Complete
4. Gear up for Success                                                                          Complete
5. jQuery                                                                                             Complete

6. Basic Front End Development Projects                                              Complete
7. Basic JavaScript                                                                                Complete
8. Object Oriented and Functional Programming                                    Complete
9. Basic Algorithm Scripting                                                                   Complete

10. JSON API's and Ajax                                                                         Complete
11. Intermediate Front End Development Projects                                  Complete
12. Intermediate Algorithm Scripting                                                     Complete
13. Advanced Front End Development Projects                                       Complete
14. Claim Your Front End Development Certificate                              Complete

The Coding Boot Camp at UT Austin                                              Status (starts 4/19/2016)
Week 1-6: Mastering the Browser (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, JQuery) 
Week 7-10: API & JSON (RESTful API"s, parsing JSON, AJAX)
Week 11-14: Server Side (Node.js, MySQL, MongoDB)
Week 15-18: PHP (WordPress, CodeIgniter, Laravel) 
Week 18-21: Full Stack Coding
Week 22-24: Final Project

CodePen Projects: http://codepen.io/Adancode/
GitHub Projects: https://github.com/Adancode
LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamcamacho1
Team Treehouse Profile: https://teamtreehouse.com/adamcamacho
Free Code Camp Profile: http://www.freecodecamp.com/adancode

Hours Spent Coding Today: 2
Total Hours Coding: 1,083

No comments:

Post a Comment