Here’s another silly little JavaScript project I have copied to repl.it. It’s a Magic Eightball game I did earlier on in the Codecademy JavaScript tutorial.



I don’t have much else to say just now, but I need to push through to make my minimum word count. I seem to write the most when I come up with a list of topics, so let me have a go at it.

Codecademy: I just watched a video by one of these vCasting geeks who compared Codecademy vs. FreeCodeCamp. The kid clearly has a preference for FreeCodeCamp’s preference for not holding one’s hand, though I wouldn’t really characterize it that way. My preference, at the moment, is for Codecademy’s support ethic, which I don’t view as hand holding. Frankly, I think inexperienced coders need a lot more support than they claim to need, but that’s just my opinion. The truth is that, in the end, I will need both Codecademy and FreeCodeCamp in order to feel like I have gotten a decent head start on coding, so really this video dweeb has got his head up his ass. I will go back to FreeCodeCamp at some point when I have a bit more confidence in my coding skills, but I found their hands-off approach to be a little anxiety producing given my neophyte status.

JavaScript: Slowly I am becoming more confident in my ability to understand and to use JavaScript, though it is still a big mystery to me. I am particularly lost when it comes to JSON requests, which is where I went off the rails with FreeCodeCamp - I ended up copying video dweeb’s instructions for each of the projects, leaving me with no real understanding of what to do. I suppose that now, having broached the subject on Codecademy, I can go back and try to cannibalize my code for ideas, but it still is a bear to understand. I’ll just keep moving forward, I guess. I know of no other way to do it.

Full-Stack Development: Really, I should be focusing more on front-end development, although I have a tendency to try to grab above my head. I did that with music, constantly reaching for something I wasn’t prepared for, so why not do the same with coding. I don’t want it to be that big a deal in my life, but I do have the feeling that coding will play some part in my academic development over the next few years. I am very interested in the idea of digital humanities. If I became an Academic Director again I would probably involve myself more deeply in digital storytelling of some sort. Really, I don’t know what the future holds for me, but coding is definitely going to be part of my professional skillset.

I think I have reached my 500 word minimum. Squeaking in just under the wire.