Freecodecamp week by week

Inspired by this post: https://medium.freecodecamp.com/how-long-does-free-code-camp-take-f986202346ef#.ycj88rtkd

Previous attempt

I started freecodecamp in June last year. I breezed through the initial HTML and CSS lesson snippets, loved the interface, loved the structure and loved the fact there was a combination of original content as well as links to resources on the web. I got to the part where they recommended a beginner computer science course and thought it would do no harm to do a refresher - it was part of the curriculum and I didn't want to miss out. The recommendations were either a course at Stanford or Harvard's CS50. The Harvard CS50 course looked exactly the thing - and it was - it has a serious cult following and I got hooked over the next few weeks and months watching the lectures and submitting the problem sets. Via beeminder I made some steady progress.

I did the last problem set, but didn't submit it and didn't strictly do the final programming project. But otherwise, tick. I went back to freecodecamp to continue through... BUT the beginner programming course part I'd just spent so long completing was dropped, the whole thing had had an overhaul and I was a bit lost as to where to pick up again.

Starting again

So I created a new user account, hooked it up to a different github account and started again. I installed RescueTime a la post linked above and have so far worked through the initial HTML, CSS, Bootstrap and JQuery lessons.

[This isn't entirely representative - I polished off the first half of the HTML ones back in January..., but still, if you generally know this stuff already, its quicker than the billed 13 hours to work through.]

Today it is on to Basic Front End Development projects (50 hours).

First projects

Completed the first two projects without too much drama. The first, creating a tribute page was reasonably straight forward, just HTML and CSS. The second, a portfolio page was harder for two reasons: one: have to write something about myself; two: starting to use some JavaScript. In the end it was surprisingly straight forward (as most things are, once you know the answer). Slightly disappointing was some JavaScript I spent a while perfecting to update the active class on the nav links, but with a strange bug, which I then ended up ripping out and replacing with a couple of bootstrap classes when I realised that was what everyone else does. About 7-8 hours logged on these.

JavaScript

Next two sections completed in just under 3 hours. Each exercise pretty much gave you the solution in the examples, so looking forward to the next Algorithm Scripting part (50 hours) to get some practice and be a bit more challenged.

Basic Algorithm Scripting

Hmm, completed in about 2 hours. I tried out a few of the new JavaScript functions I've just learnt: map, reduce and filter which was useful practise at least.