This blog is designed with a few purposes in mind for you (the percusory audience) and for me–This blog is an entry into my goal of developing three things:
- Ability to code from ground up–starting with HTML 5 and CSS.
- Learning how to use Social Media beyond just posting on FB or Twitter for the purpose of making it part of my work life.
- Exploring how to write about my adventure and hopefully make some fellow adventurers along the way.
As such, today, I’ve enrolled in three classes on edX:
- HTML5 Introduction
- HTML5 Part 1: HTML5 Coding Essentials and Best Practices
- HTML5 Part 2: Advanced Techniques for Designing HTML5 Apps
Now, before we go any further, I want to say that I’m not starting off completely ignorant of HTML. I studied HTML before going to college, but that was years ago and was way before HTML 5. I think that doesn’t quite make me a Front End Web Dev or anything though. It really just makes me one of those Free Website kiddies that put up poorly crafted Microsoft Paint images with a few lines of HTML that if clicked on, read, “New Content Coming soon!!!” That is until they took down the servers and then it became all but a memory.
In the following posts, I will track my progress as I develop my HTML coding skills as well as insights into the world of Social Media development. If you are on a similar path, chime in and lets see how we can learn from each other.
Till next time,
Social J
copyright usage info:
Autodidactic J 
I admire you for your ground-up approach! HTML confused the hell out of me way back when the Web was just getting going. Best of luck!
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Thanks, Mike! I was so determined to learn it back in the day. Had one of those thick compendiums that made some textbooks look small. I got the gist until the chapters started going into division commands. At that time I didn’t know of any programs that would simulate the code. It was just update the site, rerun it, and hope for luck. The whole process was painstakingly slow to the nth degree.
Things are a lot more coder friendly. They even have syntax checkers to highlight bad code. That’s so much better than my notepad-and-paste days of the past.
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Congratulations on learning to code! There are so many free/low cost options out there, like EdX and Udemy. I’m doing The Web Developer Bootcamp. I paid all of $24 for it and it was the best $24 I ever spent! Here’s a link: http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/click?id=rq/yDe8KSXU&subid=&offerid=323058.1&type=10&tmpid=14538&RD_PARM1=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.udemy.com%2Fthe-web-developer-bootcamp%2Flearn%2Fv4%2Foverview
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Thanks! I’m enjoying it so far. Just started, but it feels like something quintessential to my development. I’m currently doing the edX one. Perhaps you can give me a little insight what you like about the Bootcamp? Is it also focused on HTML5 and CSS3? Originally I was going to go with Codecademy but their program won’t be updated to HTML5 until Sept 27, I believe.
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Thank you for your comment! There are two great things about the udemy course: it’s as comprehensive as a development course can be, and the instructor is outstanding. Colt break everything down into bite-sized pieces so that even if you’ve ever had an experience with Javascript, you’ll pick it right up. In my opinion, Javascript is the most difficult part of development, because that’s where the logic comes into play. You need to be able to make decisions as to what will happen and when. That’s where you use Javascript. The course doesn’t emphasize HTML or CSS as much as I thought it would because that’s not the hard part. HTML mainly consists of about 100 or so tags, most of which you won’t use. For CSS, there’s Bootstrap, the most common framework. But if you learn Javascript, you’ll learn the logic behind any programming language and you’ll be able to pick up others in a snap! Not only that, this course teaches you the back end (I haven’t gotten to that part yet, but I do have experience with databases). So, you’ll know what’s happening to the data once it’s entered. Like I say, this course is as comprehensive as any development course can be. The teacher is a boot camp instructor who teaches in person and charges over $14K for the same content! I’d highly recommend it…
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That’s what’s great about online content. An average workshop facilitator or presenter costs easily between USD$25-50/hr and that’s just for a run of the mill speaker. Someone with that kind of background can easily charge over USD$100/hr and no one will flinch at it; except your spouse when they hear how much money you spent on a two-day seminar. Thank god for online distributable content: it saves us from being killed by our significant others!
I’ve heard this term bootcamps for coding. I must admit other than the association to intensive learning, I don’t know much more than that. Javascript though as you mentioned is on my list of languages to learn. I believe you are quite a bit further along with the progress of becoming a web dev. I’m just working on the basics of front-end at the moment. I will put the udemy bootcamp program you mentioned in my Skills-to-learn list folder.
Yesterday, I just downloaded XDK and have brackets setup as a syntax checker. I’m basically playing with crayons and I think you’ve been given a pencil to work with. I’m very curious to read about your experiences so far and hopefully in the future we can exchange work as we try to develop beyond being coding noobs.
Really glad to have met a fellow enthusiastic learner!
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Same here! Glad to meet a fellow enthusiastic coder. Let’s stay tuned…P.S. I also took a course on udemy before this one that focused on HTML and CSS. That was helpful to learn the basics. Developers must never stop learning, so I would recommend taking as many courses as you can.
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I think that’s true no matter what you do: when you think you know everything there is to know about something, you just don’t know enough.
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PS…The course was also updated about 10 days ago with about 20 new videos….
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That’s great to hear! It looks like you caught the program at the right time. My heart sunk when I was doing the Codecademy program and I read that it was outdated and that I would have to wait a couple more weeks for the new program. Luckily with the edX program, I found that I didn’t need to wait and that there was even more information available than what I had seen on Codecademy. Albeit this comes from someone that doesn’t know all the ins-and-outs of Codecademy. It just seemed like a really quick skim of materials and I felt it lacked in depth instruction.
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Hooray for you! I, too, have just begun to dive into the Code Sphere. I’m looking at a number of different options, but please do let everyone know the resources that work for you (or the ones that don’t!). Keep at it, and Go Team Newbie!
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Awesome! What kinda coding options are you looking at? I’ve spent pretty much every free minute researching and coding. Not so much time into the blog yet. It’s nice to receive your message though. It’d be great to hear about your experience.
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Haha, same, as you can tell from this super late response. I’ve been doing a course on Udemy (with Rob Percival) for front end web development. So, I’m currently learning HTML5 and CSS3. I hope to maybe start a different blog to show my growth, but first I gotta find more time to learn code, haha. Also, I just discovered http://www.htmldog.com/, which seems really interesting, and I find podcasts are helpful (ie. CodeNewbie, Learn To Code With Me, etc.).
Hope all has been well!
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I took a break from the Colt Steele one. It’s quite good but I needed more work on my math to keep up with the algorithms. I put a lot of time into developing my math skills but it’s a long process to getting where I need to be with them. The website you mentioned appears to serve as a rather comprehensive guide to js, at least in terms of what I’ve learned thus far.
I’m currently focused on writing, editing and social media marketing. That being said, I believe the journey back to web dev won’t take very long–in fact, my construction sign website is never far from my mind.
Are you currently designing your own site or what do you plan to do with your newly accrued front-end knowledge?
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