April 9, 2012

Learning to Code

My blog doesn't write itself....
With all of the changes I've been making to my blog lately you might not know that I don't really know how to code.  The last coding language I actually knew was BASIC....of course I don't remember any of that anymore.

Now don't get me wrong, I can play around with HTML and CSS just fine.  I have Adobe Dreamworks CS5 and it suits me well.  Usually I can either borrow or make some code and play around with it until I get it to do what I want.  This blog is proof of that.

Yes, I used some freely available widgets and code, but everything had to be severely tweaked to get it to work the way I wanted to.  If you discovered the Easter Egg I referred to Sunday you found something I haven't seen on other blogs.  I ended up taking some code for something else, tweak it, and test it.  Tweak and test, tweak and test, and then throw it out and try something else.  Yep, that's about it.



Now I've been playing around with my blog and a few websites for several years now, pretty much ever since my old workplace had a website "managed" by a group of guys who were quick to cash a check and not much else.  When our website didn't work quite right I had to figure out why.  Eventually we just moved to a new vendor that let me maintain things and would step in when I needed assistance.

Recently I decided to try an learn a few things that I simply haven't been exposed to with HTML and CSS.  Instead of the book route I decided to look into something a little more interactive.  Classes at Boise State were right out because of the price and the schedule.  A friend told me about Codeacademy.

Codeacademy has a couple of interactive lessons, including Javascript and HTML.  As you progress through the lessons you earn achievement badges noting your progress.  The HTML section consists of 7 lessons and projects.  It all seems like standard stuff I already know how to do, but any future lessons will be based off of these.  Once I'm done there I'll start in on the Javascript since I know next to nothing about that.

I'm looking forward to more HTML lessons being added.  If you know nothing about HTML though, Codeacademy is a great place to start.

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