Wha-, wha-, wha-, wha-, wha-, whatever

-

"Wha-, wha-, wha-, wha-, wha-, whatever, everything, whatever."

The above lyrics are an extract from my new favourite Lana song. This song in question is possibly the most healing of all time ever. The sentiment behind that lyric is that I don't care. 

Except that as I realised over the weekend, when I was reflecting deeply on stuff - I really do care. I am the opposite of someone who doesn't care.

I spent so much of my life pretending to myself that I am somebody who doesn't care. But I am the opposite of that.

I guess I chose to use this lyric because I am feeling a bit overwhelmed at the moment - and when I get overwhelmed it is easy to pretend not to care. But I am the opposite of that. I DO care. Especially about PROGRAMMING.

This is an image from the photoshoot for the cover of the LDR album I am currently obsessed with, NFR. I don't know why but it just made me feel so inspired so I just put it here.




CSS Stuff <3 <3 

Codecademy

Overflow

This was very very interesting and I really enjoyed reading about it. At first, it seemed a bit overwhelming, but in the end it was just so simple.

  • overflow-hidden
    • This means that if the element exceeds its parents containing area, you will not be able to see the excess content.
  • overflow-visible
    • This means that the content will just spill out over the elements boundaries if there is too much of it. This doesn't look very good.
    • This is the default setting.
  • overflow-scroll
    • This attaches a little scrollbar and is actually quite nifty and quite cute.
Codecademy then directed me to the MDN documentation to read up a bit more about this.
  • overflow-x
    • As you might imagine, this is just the same, but it just refers to the x-axis, I to going sideways.
      • This refers to the width property
  • overflow-y 
    • This is just for the y-axis, i.e., going down, or up.
      • This refers to the height property

Resetting Defaults

Probably my brain is still too full for this to click. It may be simple, but it's just not clicking. I think this might have something to do with me not taking the break from coding I said I would take. In fact, I said I would take a step back to reflect and celebrate.

*

After I took a quick break, made something to drink, had something to eat (because I was hungry), I came back and it all just seemed completely obvious. It all just made sense. Never underestimate the power of a quick break (or of taking care of yourself!!).

Resetting defaults just mean that some browsers have a default stylesheet that they, well, default to if there is no external stylesheet. 

The first piece of code in a CSS stylesheet is therefore often this:

* {
  margin: 0;
  padding: 0;
}

Apparently it is to help you to avoid cross browser differences. 

Again it is not something that I really understand fully, but hopefully it will click.

Please feel free to reach out to me on this if you have any thoughts on this or advice on this at all.

Visibility

I got onto this and started reading about it. I will follow up on it tomorrow. I want to head home on time... <3 

Stuff from my wonderful colleagues <3 

I have this wonderful new colleague called Mark. He is absolutely amazing. 

I feel so so lucky and privileged to have him on my team. I shared with him my project from yesterday.

He gave me SO MANY INTERESTING bits of feedback and advice. He also linked me to lots and lots of interesting new resources.

What did I learn from him today?

  • I learned from him that I should always be using the MDN documentation when I am looking stuff up. 
    • I usually tend to use W3, which is silly - they just happen to be really good at search engine optimization (SEO), I found out.
    • My Codecademy course told me to use the MDN documentation, so I only have myself to blame for not listening to it before, lol. 
  • I learned about units in CSS
    • px, vh, em, rem
      • I learned about what they all mean except for vh
      • I've just looked it up and it's 1% of the viewport's height.
      • Well what on earth is the viewport.
  • I also learned about variables in CSS although I haven't really understood them. 
  • I learned about the website called css-tricks.com, I would definitely like to try to out again when I understand a bit more!
  • He sent me a link to the documentation about background images, as the ones in my current project were tiling! I really didn't want that.
    • However even after having read over it, I can't really tell how to stop my images from tiling.
      • Does anybody know at all?
  • I learned about the line-height function (or what is it? is it even a 'function'? Is it a 'property'?
  • He also told me a bit more about inheritance and specificity.
  • He told me that :root was a pseudo-class but I don't really understand how that works.

Reflecting

How long have I been learning the front-end for?

I legit have been learning the frontend for 5 weeks. 5 WEEKS!!! That's all!!! That's HUGE!!! 

I hadn't realised that it had been so short. 

What have I learned in this time?

I have learned so, so, so much. I have learned so much HTML. The 'fundamentals' of it, if my course is anything to go by.

I have learned so much CSS - so, so so much of it. Okay so I learned Selectors, Visual Rules, a lot of the Box Model, and I haven't completed the 'fundamentals' yet - so what, I'll get there. 

I've also picked up loads on the side though - I devoted a whole codebar.io workshop to learning it and I have learned so much from my wonderful colleagues on CSS as well. 

Finally, I have learned LOTS OF JAVASCRIPT. Syntactically much harder then Python (I never believed it til I saw it), I LOVE this beautiful language. I AM SO SO READY TO COME BACK AND DO MORE OF IT IN THE NEW YEAR.

I am moving onto functionals next, WHOOP WHOOP. 

One Final Thought

Adam's video on learning Rust the wrong way has completely changed and revolutionised my life. 

That video has really energised and empowered me!

I am now comfortable with my chaotic way of learning. 

Because it really is a bit all over the place.

I might learn some things from the devs in the stand-up. I might learn something from the Slack channels in my team when I've shared a project. I might learn something from my Codecademy course.

It's always a bit all over the place. But it's always beautiful. And it's always worth it. And I love it.

And I love it.


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