Howdy, ya’ll!
Hope everyone had a great weekend. As I said in my first “Julie Learns to Code” blog article, I started using Codecademy this weekend. I promised a breakdown of the platform for people interested, and so here it goes!
I started with the “Web Fundamentals” course. For those new to coding – this is where you will start. It says that you will learn three things:
- How to build websites
- HTML and CSS
- Style and Design
They sure are making a lot of promises, aren’t they?
To start off you begin learning HTML basics. You learn how to set up an HTML document how to add images, how to make lists, how to style fonts. A lot of these things I already knew how to do while working with WordPress, but it was great to have a refresher!
The tricky part came when we started diving into CSS. Let me tell you, I jumped in to CSS thinking “this is easy! this is going to be so fun!”…and then got stuck pretty early on.
One thing that kinda sucks with Codcademy is that, although they give you hints – sometimes their hints aren’t super helpful. They do NOT give you answers. So when I was stuck on an element – I went to search Google (which was no help). I went to the next helper – Mr. Brett Beck. (I now want to call him Captain Code). Anyways, Brett helped me out. But at that point – I was exhausted with coding all day and decided it was a good time to take a break.
To summarize my first week with Codecademy:
Likes
- I enjoy that it’s taking code and applying it to something. I don’t think I’d be learning at as quick of a pace if I were reading articles or books on it.
- I like that we can share on Facebook or Twitter if we’ve passed a course. I’ve had a lot of friends cheering me on as I go – that’s fun.
- I like that they give you hints about what elements you might have done incorrectly so you go back and look at that element again.
Dislikes
- I dislike how they don’t show you what the correct code is. I feel that if you’ve tried and failed to get an element, they should show you how to do it correctly instead of you being stuck. I believe this needs to change, or they will lose a lot of users due to frustration. (Not everyone has Brett Beck around to help).
I will continue to learn code. I will continue to use Codecademy. I (hopefully) will learn to become less frustrated. 😉
On to next week in which I’ll learn more CSS and then – take on a project!
