Welcome to part 3 of my journey through learning full stack web development!

Part 1 of this series which details my first 2 months of learning how to code can be found here

Part 2 of this series which details the middle 3-4 months can be found here

Note: This blog post will also contain excerpts from my personal code journal which I started using with more frequency around June of 2022. These excerpts were not originally meant for public consumption and may have grammar errors. I want to preserve the entrees for what they were rather than edit them to perfection.

100daysofcode Restart Part 3 (days 1-27)

May 28
I can't believe today was my last day as an occupational therapist providing direct care! I am so excited to start learning full time and commit 100%. This morning I'm finally getting my dev stuff organized with a plan of attack. I will be restarting #100daysofcode on Monday for a fresh commitment to code at least a little every day. This is the first Saturday in actual years I haven't spent my morning catching up on therapy notes.

Day 1/100

May 31
Ok, let's try this again. Today's plan:

• 2 hours of figuring out how to build my portfolio using Hugo
  
• 2.5 hours of javascript review
  
• 1 coffee chat w/ a developer
  
• 1 codewars question
• 1 reward of vegan pho when done

Day 2/100

Jun 1

#100DaysOfCode Plan:

• 2 hours #100devs Javascript review and exercises
  
• 1 hour of trying to figure out Hugo to build a static portfolio site
  
• 1 codewar question
  
• 1 hr tutoring help
  
• 1 hr advice + coding roadmap review from my SWE cousin after he's done working :)

Day 3/100

Jun 2

• 2 hours of the 8-hour #100devs javascript review and exercises before my flight
  That's all for today as I am flying back from Atlanta to DC to get to my home office where my streaming gear is waiting for me to play around with yayyyyy

Day 4/100

Jun 5

• JavaScript review covering basic functions and methods - a lot of me shaking my fist at my screen trying to use my terminal correctly while setting up my portfolio
• A lovely meeting with @ SchipThatCode going over twitch and streamlabs tips

Day 5/100

• Easy codewars problem, had to google to figure it out but was able to at least write the pseudo codes before looking it up.
  
• Finally finished editing a YouTube video on repetitive stress injury prevention for computer users

Day 6/100

• Did 2 hours of tutoring going over using the terminal, pushing to GitHub + Netlify - setup mic, camera + dl programs to figure out streaming for this week
  
  • Reviewing object-oriented programming concepts

Day 7/100

Jun 8

• An enlightening and motivating coffee chat w/ @ artsycoder533
• Practiced pushing code from local to GitHub using terminal
• Worked a little on my portfolio trying to use Hugo to build it (had a hard time making it work and synch with Netlify )

Day 8/100

• Long info-packed coffee chat w @ jalonen_lauri (helped me w my frustrations w/ the terminal + Github )
• #100devs class on making CRUD apps
• Setup streamlabs for twitch streaming, created twitch transition + branded backgrounds using canva
• Used ohmyzsh framework to change my terminal to a light theme
• 1 hr coding tutoring with an awesome dev pushing local files to GitHub + using Hugo framework for portfolio -
• Shot +edited my first tech Youtube video!
• Attended @ lesbiantech conference + job fair

Day 9/100

• Finished editing +uploaded 2 vids to YT channel why I left healthcare for tech + chair yoga for tech workers
• Learned a ton about CRUD + pieces needed for full stack apps incl express etc
• Last #100devs class before our two week summer break (time to catch up!)

Day 10/100

Jun 13

• Attended last day of @ lesbiantech, got to connect w some really cool indvs in tech as well as recruiters at a few companies I’m super interested in
• Dug up some training I did earlier this year on using virtual + augmented reality in healthcare

Day 11/100

A chill day

• Moved slowly through some OOP material
• Watched a few videos on using Blender (it seems so complicated w/ a lot of steps to make simple things but I really wanna play w it)
• Casually watched an AR unity tutorial

Day 12/100

• Shot a 10min YT video What Is Assistive Technology
• Started fleshing out a blog post on assistive technology +why developers should be aware of it
• Put tailwind on my todo list - Hugo + terminal shenanigans

Day 13/100

• Messed around with making old code cleaner by making objects
• @ jalonen_lauri was kind enough to hop on discord and show me some stuff code on GitHub w/ real examples of OOP
• Went to a wedding so didn't code more than a couple of hrs

Day 14/100

Jun 17

• Finished up my studies w OOP
• Coffee chat w @ metalandcoffee_
• Realized live streaming is prob not in the cards for me right now but reinvigorated my desire to vlog + blog about my projects
• Worked a little bit on unscrambling old code to make objects again

Day 15/100

• Coffee chat w @ mrxinu, struck by how kind and cool they are
• Chat w/ @ ThatAdrienne a former school psych, now a dev, very cathartic + inspiring conversation about therapist burnout and how therapists make excellent developers
• No coding today, hand pain

Day 16/100

Jun 20

• Worked on a short article on why semantic HTML matters and its importance to assistive technology users
• Did some design work for an ebook - watched more ideas on OOP
• It was Saturday, I gave myself permission to rest a little

Day 17/100

• Finished designing ebook
• Finished a blog post on semantic HTML
• Finally understand the four pillars of OOP and can explain
• Tried and failed to push code to GitHub for a few hours using terminal, will be getting help on this today

Day 18/100

Today I will

• Finish my portfolio site if it’s the death of me
• Practice pushing local files to GitHub using terminal
• Finally convert all the video files of my yoga poses to gifs for the stretch break generator I’m building

Journal Entry June 23

• Today got together with my study group
• Finally understood what an object constructor was It is a constructor that takes in multiple objects and gives them all the same properties and methods Questions What is a class and how does it help with constructor objects?

Wins Made a constructor that worked making my own TV shows with show name, genre, cast list, episode number

Day 14-18

Jun 28
summary

• Had really lovely coffee chats w @ metalandcoffee_ @ mrxinu @ ThatAdrienne they gave me so much insight on their experiences as SWE and many good tips
• Worked every day on learning OOP and asynchronous programming *Got way comfier using GitHub

Day 19-21

Jun 28
Summary

• Awesome chat w @ hot_girl_spring, lots of fun hearing about her disdain for JavaScript LOL
• Started studying APIs
• Worked on my portfolio still struggling using Hugo
• Fun chat w @ ReedCodes about the wonders of CSS stylesheet templates

Day 22-24

• Discovered the wonders of a silent virtual study session for working on #100devs API hw + studied for 3+ hrs w my fellow code baddies
• FINALLY USED AN API AND GOT IT TO WORK

Day 25-26

• Catching up on #100devs hw including a very long build of a simple full-stack app via watching @ mayanwolfe’s 6hr vod, she is so fun to watch!
• Silent study sessions with my code baddies to tackle more API stuff

Day 27

• 3 hr silent code & study w some #100devs baddies
• Connected MongoDB to my local server and learned a little about databases
• Messed around w terminal and Github using vscode
• Uploaded 2 yoga for computer users videos on YT

June 29

Journal Entry
Today I learned…

• MongoDB is used to store data put into a form into a cloud, very cool, put in quotes and MongoDB will put it in its database
• Git terminal commands, placed notes on my wall for creating a local repo, adding a remote repo, and logging local changes to the remote repo
• Looking into building our own data sources that we can build what we want with MongoDB
• Learning how to put data into a database
• We need to do two things to show quotes from MongoDB Atlas to our users.
• Get quotes from MongoDB Atlas.
• Rendering the quotes in HTML with a template engine

Wins:

• Used EJS to generate HTML markup with plain JavaScript, got it to work by troubleshooting returned error message
• Figured out error message stopping local server from working (express.js not installed in the correct area, needed to be at the root of file)

Struggles: Felt like I spent a lot of time on simple things and troubleshooting to figure out where to place files, but felt good I was able to figure out how to do most of the steps up to the point I stopped today, which is right before making the objects for the quotes.

Notes: Via B during silent study sesh chat-> ” video on installing Heroku CLI. I'd suggest watching it because that was my stumbling block yesterday and Monday.” twitch.tv/videos/1315269230

Random Web app ideas:

• Making this prettier in a nicer format web app with automated dates and generated areas of concern
• Tarot card web app: make flip of card happen on the server side instead of a coin flip

To be continued

Although this concludes my first 6 months of formally learning full stack web development and 100+ days overall of the challenge, my #100daysofcode challenge continues! My posts have become more project-based as I start to finish front-end and backend builds I made over the course of this year.

I will be adding another series to finish up the challenge and share all of my more detailed journal entries in an upcoming post for those interested.

Thanks for joining me on this journey, and see you on the next post!