No Reminders

One thing has become beautifully clear to me today. 

The hard work didn't finish yesterday when I started my new role as a Trainee Software Engineer. It has only just begun. 

And I had a wonderful chat with my manager today about how important it was to focus on and prioritise learning for now. 

No Reminders

'No reminders' is a beautiful song by Jonathan Bree. He is one of my favourite singers - he has a beautiful voice, so deep - and he works closely with one of my favourite artists of all time, Princess Chelsea. They both live and work in New Zealand and they are both indie artists - in fact, Jonathan Bree owns/runs the record label they are on. 

Listening to this song now and going absolutely nuts. Princess Chelsea and Jonathan Bree have music that is just completely out of this world. And when they sing together - ohhhhhhhhh myyyyyyyy goooooooooooooooooooooooooooood. 

Working On My Scope Project 

One of the things that I have learned is that you declare a variable without assigning a value.

So you could just have let newVar;

And then later on, if you were defining variables e.g. within if/else statements, you need to assign them without the let, otherwise they are just new variables. e.g., like:

newVar = 'Susanna';

newVar = 'Christmas';

newVar = 'Coding';

and so on.

One last little thing that I learned...

...was that the scope of something can be too loose as well. 

E.g. so sometimes putting a variable inside of a code block (like a function) e.g. if it's something like a random number generator allows it to be new every time the function is called.

Code Challenges: JavaScript Fundamentals 

I am very very pleased to announce that as one of my challenges, I took a very cryptic brief, and I produced the following code:

The above example obviously returned false.

This was the brief:

A Remarkable Chat With Owen

Owen is the Product Manager of the new team I am working in, I have referenced him on here once before although sadly I'm not sure if I can find that post because I have nearly 60 (!!) now.

I had a wonderful, wonderful chat with him today 

I could write all night about how wonderful he is and about how much he cares about inclusivity and accessibility but I have to go home this evening 😂 But anyway he is so lovely and so supportive and when I started this job, he asked me what would help me. 

I realised with him today that setting out my goals and planning them no matter how much it needs to be done, again and again, helps me to re-focus and re-prioritise my to-do list. It's not enough for me to make a list - I have to make them very often (maaaaaaaaaad ADHD yo). 

So having said that, here are two things that can help.

Making a List On My Blog of the Next Foci In My Codecademy Course

So I don't want to use my blog as a random to-do list - I did that for a few days before until my colleague Mark let me off the hook with everything I was trying to do. But I could use it to focus and to re-focus onto the next steps of my course. 

For instance, my current task is called:

• Code Challenges: JavaScript Fundamentals
• I am about 2/15 of the way through it - but I just started today after I finished my Scope project, which was what I set out to do.
• These are like one off coding challenges with no solutions given (eek) !!!

And the next 2-3 steps of my course are: 

• Going off-platform with JavaScript (2 informationals and 4 articles to read, including setting up Node, which my mentor (who I will introduce on here soon!) has been asking me to do anyway.
• Challenge Project: Number Guesser
• Using all the stuff that I have learned in JS so far anyway
• Review of JavaScript Syntax, Part I

Making To-Do Lists At The Start Of Each Study Block  

My days are now organised into study blocks for Codecademy. 

Owen said at the start of each block I should make a to-do list of what I want to achieve. Then to cross it off as it gets done - and if stuff gets rolled over from the morning block, then I can do it in the afternoon as nearly every day I have to sessions put in. Thank you Owen, you absolute hero!!!