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25Mar 2019 by Nic

My Current Front End Web Development Setup

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I am not a professional developer. I'm a recreational developer. My ultimate goal has been to do whatever it takes to get coding then adjust as I go along. When I first started, I would nitpick over every detail. Version control options, editors, package managers, plugins etc. and ultimately it was just wasting time. Very valuable time I could have spent coding instead. You'll know soon enough if something isn't working the way you hoped - I recommend worrying about it at that time versus trying to get everything set up exactly right before you even start. My setup has changed since last year - you can review my original setup in my Environment setup for beginner web development post. However, the same rule applies - when you're just starting…

30Jul 2018 by Nic

Data Science Week 12 Fun with Python

Data Science, Python

Well I fell off the data science wagon for a couple weeks and jumped back on to have some fun with Python. Python thankfully is not a new language for me. However, prior to this course the last program I wrote in Python was for a programming class back in 2012. There was some serious dusting off the cobwebs for me as I was going through the Python lessons. Most of my prior Python experience was unrelated to data science. One thing about this challenge course is that the Python portion isn't super specific to data science. It's a general Python course with an overview of data types and operators, control flow (if, elif, for and while statements). The challenge course has instructions on setting up Python with Anaconda and…

19Jun 2018 by Nic

Data Science Week 7

Data Science

The last couple weeks I've played catch up on the Data Science lessons. I'm 51% through the course. So far the entirety of the statistics topics have been review which I'm very thankful for as they go by quickly. Honestly I can't believe how much old statistics and math knowledge (that I rarely use) is still bouncing around in my head after all these years. It was a very nice surprise to have remembered so much from a class I took probably 10 years ago. Pulling out my old statistics text book I can now see why. The image for this post is my old statistics book. Check out all those reference tabs... Though I had initially planned to go back later and complete the optional sections - I went…

18Jun 2018 by Nic

DOM manipulation using JavaScript

JavaScript

DOM Manipulation Using JavaScript The theme for the last couple weeks has been DOM manipulation using JavaScript as I've worked on finishing up the Memory Game project. A big piece of the memory game project is using DOM methods to change HTML elements and updating the elements to reflect actions taken in the game. Examples would be the timer starting and stopping, move counter increasing by one each time two cards were opened and the star rating decreasing based on total moves made. Event listeners Event listeners are methods that wait for a particular action to occur before they fire. For the Memory Game project, event listeners are primarily set up in response to card click events. An example would be clicking a card which in turn kicks off code…

22May 2018 by Nic

FEND Week 4 – Learning Git

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Learning Git Learning Git is definitely NOT something than can be done over a weekend. Though I learned quite a bit, it took me much longer to complete all the Git lessons than I had originally anticipated. Git is an open source version control system that has been around for many years. There are so many things you can do with Git. Lots of shortcuts, Git bash customization, features and functionality that would take many months if not years to fully get the hang of. Certainly not trying to scare anyone away from learning Git - there are plenty of online resources available to get you up to speed quickly. For example, here is a nifty interactive version of a git cheat sheet that does a much better job visually…

20May 2018 by Nic

Data Science Week 2 Visualizing data

Data Science

Visualizing data This week I focused on getting through Visualizing Data. At the time of this post I'm over halfway through Visualizing Data with 55% left to complete on the the second half of the lessons. In the interest of time and getting to items that I'm less familiar with, I've decided to focus on the mandatory sections and then come back later to complete the optional (OPT) sections. As I am doing both this and the FEND at the same time I need to make the best use of my time. Once I finish the core concepts I'll go back and complete anything optional if I have the time. Back onto the topic of Visualizing Data. The items that I've covered this week are: Bin sizes Frequency Histograms Distribution…

13May 2018 by Nic

FEND Week 3

JavaScript

Portfolio website project Turned in. Passed with flying colors . No big recommended changes so I've moved onto the next section Web Programming with JavaScript. I would share the project but it isn't online because I'm too lazy to host images somewhere to refer to remotely for the project. At some point I will go back and do just that then update this post with a link. JavaScript Most of the JavaScript lessons (data types & variables, conditionals, loops, functions, arrays & objects) were already completed during the challenge course. As they were very recently completed, I've focused on syntax, shell workshop, version control, git repos this week. buhbye var hello let and const During the three month challenge course variables were declared using the keyword var . It seems that…

10May 2018 by Nic

Data Science Week 1

Data Science

This week I focused mainly on getting set up and all the course intro stuff out of the way. I've taken statistics in the past as it was a math requirement for me to finish my associates in business years ago. Though it's been many years, I'm thankful that I still remember the basics and this isn't all brand new to me. Most of the course sections I've completed so far consist of short videos with multiple choice quizzes after each video. Some of the key topics covered so far... constructs, operational definition, data, sample average, randomness, casual inference, benefits/downsides of surveys, control groups, blind & double blind experiments and drawing conclusions. At the bottom of this post is a list of all the lessons. Within most of the lessons…

06May 2018 by Nic

FEND Week 2

CSS, HTML, Responsive Design

This week I finished the Web Foundations lessons/quizzes and continued my focus on responsive web design. Once I completed the lessons I continued work on the portfolio website project which is due in a couple days. Responsive Design One of the quizzes provided non-responsive html & css files that had to be tweaked to make them responsive. This involved setting relative widths for containers (ex: using width: 100% vs width: 800px) , padding the a tags (to ensure touch targets are easy to hit on smaller screens) and adding the following meta element within the <head> section of the html to optimize the viewport for mobile devices: <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0"> Here are a couple explanations that go into more detail on the viewport meta tag: Using the viewport meta…

06May 2018 by Nic

Data Science Challenge Scholarship

Data Science, Learning Resources, Python

While I was waiting to find out whether or not I would be accepted into phase 2 of the FEND I applied for the Bertelsmann Data Science Challenge scholarship. I figured it was worth a shot. Apparently it was because on May 2nd I received an email congratulating me on being accepted into the Data Science scholarship program. This scholarship opportunity is the first time I ever heard of the company Bertelsmann. I don't even know what they do. Even so I'm grateful for the opportunity to learn a new topic. The data science challenge program doesn't officially start until May 8th. In the meantime, I joined the programs Facebook community which has been... interesting. There's all sorts of different people. Some even in the FEND program like me. Some stay at…