Gotta Get Through the Intro

Just yesterday, I started a new course on Udemy, Andrew Mead's The Modern JavaScript Bootcamp. This is going to be a great class, and I will eventually learn a lot, but I gotta get through some stuff first. This course starts from the very basics of JavaScript. I'm all for doing some review of the fundamentals for anything, but this is too fundamental. I've got it on 1.5X speed, and it's still boring the crap out of me. I've gotten through the section on introducing variables, the section introducing functions, and I'm now almost through the section introducing objects. After this, it's on to arrays, and then I think we will get into some stuff that's actually challenging. That, however, is still almost 3 hours away, so I just gotta keep trekking through until it gets interesting. As I've said in the past, I love Andrew's style of teaching and I think he's one of the best out there. He gives you plenty of challenges and explains things really thoroughly. However, when going over basic concepts like this, it can seem like a really arduous process. After the arrays section, we are going to go over using JavaScript in the browser which, I'm sure, will have some setup stuff that I'm already comfortable with, but then we'll get into some more interesting concepts.

I'm really missing the GraphQL course I was taking, and I may come back to it tomorrow. While this won't be something I'll be using in the real world for quite some time, if ever, it's something that really interests me and fits how I think really well. I would really like to be able to use GraphQL in my job at some point, be it this one or the next. If not GraphQL, I could definitely see myself going a little deeper on the backend and learning more about communicating with databases. In my job, we will be using a SQL database, which can work with GraphQL, no doubt, but they need to get up to speed in a lot of respects at this place. From what I can gather, they have an interest in starting to use some more modern technologies, but I think their code base is so huge, they couldn't fathom migrating the whole thing over. They would have to change the code base piece by piece, and changing over the entire front end, back end, or database, would be a huge task for them. For example, they are using Vue for a few components on the front end, but they want to get away from this and actually start using React, but they are really hesitant to do so. I think they are concerned they will have compatibility issues. If I want to introduce some of these new technologies, I think I'm going to have to fight for it and then prove that it's worth it, and also back it up with solid code. I will have some challenges, but that's good.

Today was my Sunday, and tomorrow, being Sunday, will actually be the last Sunday I will have to work. The next two weekends, I will be working Saturday, but I will have off on Sunday, and then I start my new job on the 9th of March. It will be awesome to be able to work a regular work schedule, from 8 to 4:30, Monday through Friday, and I'm really excited to get there. For this weekend, my daughter and I hung out the whole time and had a lot of fun. We didn't do anything crazy, but we played around the house, went outside and rode her bike, cleaned up the house, and did some errands around town. Next Sunday, we are all going to Busch Gardens together, the first of many trips this year. For Valentine's Day this year, I got my fiancé and I season passes to Busch Gardens and Adventure Island, which is a water park up in Tampa. I figured this would be a great way for us as a family to make a lot of long-lasting memories and get out of town every once in a while. Our little one loves animals, and Busch Gardens is all about some animals, so she'll have a blast there and we'll have fun riding some roller coasters. Then, when it gets really hot, as it does down here in Florida, we can take a day trip up to Tampa and cool off at the water park, which she will absolutely love. It's going to be a fun year.

Until tomorrow!