From Tinker to Developer

I’ve been messing around with code since the early 2000s, starting with basic HTML and CSS and moving into WordPress.  I’ve written a simple WordPress plugin to display a Hawaiian greeting for the logged-in user based on the time of day and day of the week.  I love CSS and have really enjoyed what I’ve done with JavaScript.  

2020 is going to be the year of learning front-end development for me, with a heavy focus on JavaScript.

The Journey

“You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You’re on your own. And you know what you know. And you are the one who’ll decide where to go.”

Dr. Seuss, Oh, The Places You’ll Go!

I plan to learn a lot this year.  My goal is to be a confident junior JavaScript developer by the end of 2020. Obviously, it will take more than a year to get where I’m going, but I think I can do a lot in a year. The journey is also going to involve more than JavaScript. Here are my focus items for 2020:

  • Git/GitHub
  • SSH
  • HTML
  • CSS
  • JavaScript
  • jQuery

How I’m Getting There

  • GitHub Learning Lab
    It’s been a while since I’ve used Git and GitHub so I want to brush up on some of the basics.
  • Beginner JavaScript Master Package by Wes Bos
    I know some of the basics, but I want to make sure I have a solid foundation moving forward. Wes Bos is going to be a great resource to ensure that’s the case.
  • freeCodeCamp
    I think I can do more than two of these this year, but I’m only planning on two to make sure I get the material down. This won’t be about seeing how far I can get in freeCodeCamp, but about actually learning the material. I won’t be moving on from a section until I understand how it works.
    • Responsive Web Design Certification (300 hours)
    • JavaScript Algorithms and Data Structures Certification (300 hours)
  • #100DaysOfCode
    I’ll be writing a post to explain how I’m going to implement this. The two main rules are:
    1. Code minimum an hour every day for the next 100 days.
    2. Tweet your progress every day with the #100DaysOfCode hashtag.
  • Reading