Back in September, I decided to learn HTML and CSS through Codecademy. I created a project to apply this learning. The result was my profile website, DanielleWerner.com. (While it is up there for the world to see, it’s not finished, and I have plans for it yet.)

But then Codecademy wanted me to mix JavaScript with HTML/CSS, and I had to stop, as it assumed some knowledge of JavaScript already. That’s because Codecademy starts off naturally by teaching you JavaScript. However, I bypassed their default pathway and went straight to HTML/CSS, as that’s what I needed to do what I wanted to do. I finished what HTML/CSS stages I could, but now I’m going back to the start and learning JavaScript.

My initial thoughts using ‘prompt’ and ‘.length’ were that this was really cool and not too difficult. Then I started going into functions and if/else loops, where I still am now. It has suddenly dawned on me that learning JavaScript won’t be like learning HTML. They’re two very separate styles of languages. You can do a lot with just a little HTML (like heading and paragraph tags), but JavaScript is a lot more difficult to apply. It’s a lot more involved and a lot less forgiving. I’m being challenged to break down something I can do simply, like calculating the power of a number (e.g. 2 cubed), into chunks for the computer to process. HTML gives you a framework but let’s you use your language within it; JavaScript is much for like a whole new language, with its own vocabulary, grammar and punctuation.

But I will prevail.

It’ll help once I learn enough to start applying some of the ideas to my website. I so want to learn how to make interactive pages, to be able to get the internet to do my bidding. And it’s a stepping stone to where I want to go.

Another project I’m considering is making a basic web app, which would involve learning about LAMP: Linux, Apache HTTP server, MySQL and a programming language like PHP. Why? Because I have ideas for basic apps and I want to try them out. Also, everyone seems to want some SQL experience in the tech world, and I’ve heard that it’s difficult to learn when you don’t have a project to apply it to.