Necessary practice

I had another 13 hour shift working outside in the heat today, and it was a killer. My body feels broken down and my eyes just want to close up for the night, but I have work to do. I have to make every second of my time count, so I rushed home after work, got some smootches from my daughter before she went to bed, took a shower, and then got down to some work. I don't know how long I'll have tonight before I'm completely incapable of any cognitive capacity, so I'm making my time count as best I can. So far, I feel like I've accomplished quite a bit, but I'm only about an hour and a half in. I won't be spending too much time on the construction of this entry tonight, as my time is better spent learning tonight.

Instead of diving back into a video, I decided it might be better to work on some exercises. I recently discovered a site called Edabit and I'm absolutely loving it. This site offers a seemingly infinite amount of JavaScript practice problems, which is exactly what I need right now to drill in all of the stuff I've been learning lately. Without practice, it's difficult not only to retain the knowledge I've received, but also to interpret it into actual code. It's one thing to listen to explanations of the concepts, which I think is incredibly valuable, but the next step after this is to apply these concepts and push your limits. This site is structured where you can start out with some fairly easy exercises and work your way up to much more difficult problem sets. They go from very easy to expert level, and while I'm still in the very easy level, the exercises are beginning to get pretty challenging. A lot of the time, you are required to use a specific built-in method in JavaScript and I have to look up how to use that method or which method to use. Even senior-level developers would have to look up the definitions of these built-in methods; there is no shame in this and it's not cheating. Sometimes the skill itself is knowing how to research and find the answers you need.

I have the next 2 days off and I'm looking forward to getting some work done when I can. Tomorrow, I'll be able to study while my little girl naps for at least a couple of hours and then we are heading down to main street for a Halloween celebration. If you have kids, you may have heard the song "Baby Shark;" it's a ridiculous song that for some reason every small child in the world is completely captivated by. It has become a routine in our family to sing this song in front of the mirror concluding bath time every night and is an integral part of every day for us. So, we all have shark costumes for Halloween, even the dog, and are going to head down to mingle with the people as our little shark family. It should be a lot of fun, but then it's time to get back to work after this. I have a pair programming session set up tomorrow night with my buddy Matt at 8, and I'm really looking forward to this. Last week's session was super valuable for my technical communication skills and I learned a lot about JavaScript in a short period of time. Saturday's schedule is a little less hectic, and should be an excellent opportunity to get some work done.

Until tomorrow!