Tue, July 30, 2024

One hurdle I overcame today was that in the HTML+CSS that Codecademy provided in this last lesson, standard CSS element properties were missing in Chrome Devtools inspector. I found that a CSS stylesheet named reset.css is removing all default CSS element settings. Considering the age-old browser standards commotion that is now mainly resolved, this at first seems draconian, but I think the intent is to comprehensively design the UI/UX and achieve an app-like experience. One thing I've found in coding is that if you don't stay on top of the details, you can get some interesting results. Also, names can have alternative meanings.

In addition to kicking off each day with a quick practice from the previous day as a warmup exercise, I'm going to add variety into my day with code challenges and side quests, daily reviews at end of day to hit the ground running next morning, plus a weekly review on the weekend. My mentor reminded me to use my GitHub repo to showcase skills to prospective employers, which is a perfect emphasis. I'm presuming Codecademy will progress as it has in their online environment, so will archive my core projects for others to explore.

Codecademy learning environment, left to right:

1. Course content, prompts, questions, quizes.
2. Tabbed code editor with a console and virtualized storage backing.
3. Embedded browser to see code results when tapping run button.
4. Optionally, Chrome Devtools Inspector is a great tool.

All columns are resizable, with enough screen space on a 4k monitor, but when traveling on my macbook usually only 2 columns are open.