Exploring other realms of web development
Today, I took a break from the formidable beast that is JavaScript and delved into some different areas of the web development space. This is one thing that's really great about Frontend Masters' curriculum: they give you an array of classes with different topics and break them up. The beginner curriculum started with a general overview of web development course, then a JavaScript course, then a responsive web design course, then another JavaScript course, and finishes with a course specifically on the Chrome developer tools. The last course, "Mastering Chrome Developer Tools," by John Kuperman, I finished up earlier today and I'm about halfway through one of the elective courses in this same curriculum series, "Website Accessibility," by the same instructor. It's been a really nice break from JavaScript after a very rigorous course that I finished yesterday. I should finish the course on website accessibility tonight and move on to the other elective course, "Modern Search Engine Optimization," by Mike North.
I learned so much about the Chrome developer tools that I didn't know about today. I've really just been scratching the surface of the capabilities of this toolbox. John Kuperman is very knowledgeable about the topics he presented and you can tell he's an expert in this area. The one thing that really blew my mind with these tools is that you can actually use it just like an IDE. You can actually import your entire project onto the browser, make changes, and save them directly back to your project. Gone are the days of making a change, copying and pasting it back into vsCode. I'm so attached to vsCode at this point, it kind of scares me to code outside of it, but I think I could become comfortable enough to do this, eventually. I learned a lot about debugging in the developer tools, as well as checking performance and isolating memory leaks. I also learned that lighthouse is built directly into the developer tools to audit your website. I was curious about this site's audit score; it scored 100% on performance, 81% on accessibility, 93% on best practices, and 100% on SEO. That is really good!
Looking ahead, once I get through the next course on SEO, I enter into the professional curriculum, and things start to get serious. This curriculum actually starts out with 3 JavaScript courses in a row, so my head will likely be ringing by the end of next week, but I'm hoping I can get through it. The first course, "JavaScript: The Hard Parts," by Will Sentance(who looks just like Draco Malfoy) has been recommended to me by a bunch of people on Twitter. So far, since I started Frontend Masters, my JavaScript knowledge has gone from beginner to intermediate-beginner in the matter of a week. I have high hopes for these courses, but as long as I apply my same attitude of learning that I have been of late, there's no doubt in my mind that I can at least progress into the mid-intermediate or advanced-intermediate realm by the end of this stretch. Again, I always have a long way to go, but I'm making progress every day and this progress is building up into something awesome.
Until tomorrow!
