Update 04/2024: JavaScript and Other Adventures
April 24, 2024
It’s interesting to look back on my original posts from last year and look at how much I’ve revamped my goals and learning plan.
I did finish up my site theme here (although I’m sure it could use a big overhaul when I get back around to it), but that sent me down a different path. I ended up starting to dive into PHP with the goal of building a truly custom web app using PHP and SQL as the back end (short version, a custom personal organization tool with some features I haven’t seen elsewhere). I got pretty far with the back end but when I got to the front end side I realized…I was going to have to stop and learn JavaScript properly.
I ended up choosing a course on Udemy, “The Complete JavaScript Course 2024” by Jonas Schmedtmann. It’s a 70-hour course and I only have an hour or so on workdays, so I’ve been plugging away at it since December. My Excel spreadsheet that tracks my progress projects that I’ll get done in mid-June. It’s a fantastic course–it really deep-dives into both how JavaScript works and why it works that way. It’s also deep-diving into some concepts that I had run across but hadn’t understood fully.
I do think I’m now going to have to completely overhaul the work I’d done on my project from scratch, as the architecture’s…shaky. Since I figure that I’m going to have to redo all my work anyway, I figured I might as well take courses in all of it. The rest of the courses I have lined up are:
- PHP for Beginners by Tim Buchalka (14 hours)
- Seems a little short, so I wonder if I’ll have to do a second course on this topic?
- The Complete SQL Bootcamp by Jose Portilla (9 hours)
- Build Responsive Real-World Websites with HTML and CSS by Jonas Schmedtmann (37.5 hours)
- I already know enough HTML to be going on with, but my knowledge is kinda outdated (I learned in the 2010s) and I figure a deeper understanding would help
- Advanced CSS and Sass by Jonas Schmedtmann (28 hours)
So yeah, another 88.5 hours of courses after I finish this one. It’s a LOT, but at the same time, the 70-hour course took me about six months, so I figure I can knock the rest of these out by next February or so?
Long term, I want to also learn Linux and Apache to round out the LAMP stack, but I don’t need those to finish my project.
For now, I’ve put aside learning an assembly language (I think I need to learn C first) and put Python on the back burner, since I don’t have access to it at my new job, so it’s not as high of a priority.
Posted In: Education