Still (March)ing Along...

Hi, friends! I thought it'd be a good time to check in because I'm at half-way mark of the #100DaysOfCode challenge (I can't believe it!). It has been a fun journey so far learning new programming skills, learning about myself, and learning about what progress I can make with consistent practice. As I continue this challenge, I now have a better idea of the skills I want to hone in on and generally how I plan to move forward with the challenege in general.

Since my last check-in, I've wrapped up the Web Development 101 course through The Odin Project, built a blog with Ruby on Rails, and built a Pomdoro Timer as the capstone project! Yay! This project was a pair programming project, so I was also able to learn more about how to use a Git workflow involving branches, PRs, reviews, and merges. Honestly, this git workflow was pretty intimidating at first. I worked with my sister on this project and had to have her walk me through the git checkouts, deletes, merges a few times before I felt comfortable enough to do it alone! I was just really scared of somehow deleting everything. Luckily... that didn't happen :)

So, I've learned the fundamentals of web development using HTML/CSS/JS, git version control, pair programming... what's next?

The plan for the latter half of the challenge

In the last week or so in particular, I have been working on improving my skills in:

• Ruby Programming
• Test Driven Development (using rspec)
• Object Oriented Programming

I am really enjoying this material in comparison to the HTML/CSS/JS I learned in the first quarter of the challenge because I feel like it's more about solving problems. Don't get me wrong, I really appreciate things looking nice, I just have a hard time motivating myself to make things look pretty vs making things function (at least in this current phase of my life). My plan is to continue improving upon these skills. Then, once I feel comfortable enough with Ruby, I want to get into learning Ruby on Rails to build web apps!

How I might approach things differently

The intent of this challenge, for me, was to have fun and learn something. I think technically the challenge is to code Every Single Day for at least 1 hour, but moving forward I am not sure how closely I will stick to that rule. Often, when I do get around to coding during the evenings after work and on the weekends, I spend far more than 1 hour. But some days, I am just really tired after a long day of work. I understand that consistency is key, but consistency doesn't necessarily mean every single day. So, moving forward, I might give myself some more space when I really feel spent.

Another thing I would like is to spend more time taking notes / creating cheat sheets for myself. This will mean spending less time coding and more time reading code / writing about it, but as with every skill there needs to be a balance between practice and studying to get good at it.