Since I have been writing about coding for the past couple of weeks, my coding skills have really improved. In particular, I feel like I have turned a corner on array methods. I don’t have them memorized, but I know how to check them on Mozilla Development Network and how to use them in sequence to effect multiple changes on an array. It feels kind of cool to be able to fuck around with code in a manner that will be useful at some point. Now I just need to get to the useful part.

But as I was saying, writing about my coding practice has helped me to focus a bit more - that and the fact that since I have joined Codecademy Pro I am getting more experience with every aspect of coding I have touched upon so far. Just keep writing and coding and practicing music and I should be on track.

At some point, though, it would be best for me to turn my freewriting toward my academic reading and writing. So far, as I have been writing this blog, I have kept the writing light, really just writing on the surface. This surface, though, does help me to organize my thoughts, so I should take advantage of using my freewriting as a means of organizing my academic thoughts.

For now, though, let me just stick with freewriting about coding and musical practice, letting my mind wander where it will. Writing this blog has yielded quite a few benefits, so let me keep on the same path for now.

JavaScript: An interesting thing about JavaScript is that it seems to be both a front-end and a back-end programming language. For this reason alone I need to push through the difficulties I have had trying to learn it so that I can become proficient with this language. This is why I am a bit pumped about finally getting the array methods - it feels like I cleared a hurdle. I have also begun to understand switch statements and nested for loops as well as basic functions. Just keep plugging away.

jQuery: The article I read the other day about full-stack development mentioned that the use of jQuery is really fading out at this point. I still find it to be easier to understand than so-called vanilla JavaScript, so I think I’ll stick with it for now. But the full-stack path on Codecademy Pro seems to promote the use of React over jQuery, leaving me to believe that React will be more useful in the long run. It’s interesting to me that languages seem to fall in and out of favor, but I guess I just need to move forward with the attitude that any knowledge is good knowledge. Coding is coding.

Jekyll, Liquid, & Markdown: I have gotten quite a bit out of my experience of creating this blog and learning how to write with Markdown. I should also, at some point, learn a bit about coding with Liquid so I can continue to customize the blog. Since I first generated this blog I have added pagination and some social media links using articles I have found on the internet. If I knew how to code using Liquid I may be able to write my own customizations. It would be nice to have some more information shown in the margins, kind of like what a WordPress blog does (for example, my WordPress Blog). I especially like the word cloud for various categories and keywords that run through my blog posts, as well as the ability to access posts by month. I love the simplicity of this Jekyll blog, but I would like to add just a few more bells and whistles.

Python & Ruby: Python is a back-end language I have put some effort into learning, and so I should continue with it at some point. I’ll put it at the end of my Codecademy Pro curriculum, learning Ruby as a primary back-end language, but I would like to become at least partially conversant in Python. I don’t know anything about Ruby at this point, but the Codecademy Pro full-stack curriculum includes three tutorials on Ruby and nothing on Python. I do have, though, a few books on Python that should put me on track with it in addition to Codecademy’s one Python tutorial. I’ll put both of these languages on the back burner for now, though, and focus on learning JavaScript and the React and jQuery libraries (or is React a framework? I don’t know yet).

Coding for Echo: Codecademy includes one tutorial on how to code for Amazon’s Echo, teaching Alexa a few more tricks. Mom has said she is going to buy me an Echo for Christmas, so this would be very cool to learn how to program it. I’ll ask it, “Alexa, what the hell?” and I’ll program some sort of response. In fact, I’m really looking forward to being able to do something with this. It should be cool.