Codecademy

Roger Cheng

Codecademy “jQuery” notes

The “jQuery” class track was my first Codecademy class where everything is new to me. It was a lot of fun!

I’m very amused that the “new HTML” has ditched a lot of the mechanisms of the “old HTML” yet they’re all together in one big bucket of HTML. There were input forms using the input fields that I had known before, but they don’t bother with the form submit at the end. Entirely different script code is executed to replace the old-school form submit.

A whole lot of “new HTML” is hitched to the <div> element. Which, in the old world, does nothing. (That’s not a sarcastic remark, read the official specification.) But with CSS and jQuery, the empty placeholder of a <div> becomes the starting point for visuals, actions, responses, all kinds of things impossible in old static HTML.

This was also the first Codecademy class that referenced API documentation for the class material. I was a little annoyed with the previous classes that lacked a pointer for students to get more information.

Towards the end of the class, they introduced jQuery UI, which is a separate library built on top of jQuery. I think the fact they were two separate entities deserved more emphasis, and the class didn’t get into why they were two separate things at all.

Once I understand how the design philosophies differ between the two, I will have an idea if I should look in one or the other for any specific thing I might be researching. But I don’t have that yet! So I’ll have to look in both places until I do.

 

Roger Cheng

Codecademy “JavaScript” notes

The Codecademy class for Javascript covers a lot of ground. It teaches the JavaScript language alongside some programming fundamentals. I thought it was a decent introduction but it’s hard to gauge what it would look like to fresh eyes.

A side effect of the style meant the pacing can be frustrating when I’m already familiar with programming but not familiar with the JavaScript specifics. Some places would have a lot of repetition on general concepts I knew (“yes, yes, move on”) and followed by a brief mention of something uniquely JavaScript (“wait, I wanted more information on that.”) before moving on. Example: JSON.

The class covered some basics of object-oriented programming, but not much explanation on the why behind it. In the context of simple programming exercises, OOP looks like unnecessary overhead. Maybe the creators of the class decided that is out of scope. People will learn about organization and object hierarchy as they get exposure to more complex tasks sometime down the line.

As a C/C++/Java/C# veteran, I look upon JavaScript’s type system with some suspicion. It is extremely flexible, which can be very powerful when used correctly, but it seems very easy to shoot myself in the foot. The fact that most efforts to improve JavaScript (Dart, TypeScript, etc.) introduce a stronger type system tells me I’m not alone in this suspicion.

In the web world, where projects are built on top of a set of libraries talking to each other via JavaSript, the type system means there’s nothing really keeping one library from trampling all over (uh… “adding features to”) the types defined in another library. The chaotic churning of types sound like a very tough class of problems to debug. That’s the theory, anyway. I expect real-world practice to be one of three possibilities:

  1. It’s under control: There are conventions in place, or maybe there are tools to manage it, or at least debugging aids to detect chaos in progress.
  2. It’s not a problem: Despite my paranoia, in practice just because the type system is flexible doesn’t mean it is abused.
  3. It’s exactly as bad as you think it is. We deal: Oh I hope it’s not this one.
Roger Cheng

Codecademy “HTML & CSS” notes

UPDATE: Codecademy has revamped their introductory “HTML & CSS” class. The notes below reflect the old version which is no longer available.

Just finished the Codecademy “HTML & CSS” class. It helps me get a feel of how Codecademy lessons are organized. There is a lot of overlap in material with the “Make a Website” class I finished earlier, but their structure is different.

“Make a Website” is focused on the goal of the AirBnB-like page they advertised up front, and the steps are laid out to reach that goal. While it starts with basic HTML concepts, it doesn’t go into HTML areas not relevant to the goal. It’s also happy to deviate from basic HTML in service of the goal, using the Bootstrap framework instead of getting mired in the complexities of handcrafting HTML layout.

“HTML & CSS” is less focused on the goal (though it does have mini-goals in each of the units) and so has fuller coverage of basic concepts. On the CSS side, I liked the fact it gets into more gritty details of layout, but far short of what I can do with Bootstrap. There’s still a sizable gap in my understanding before I can explain how Bootstrap does the layout magic it does with just CSS.

There’s a lot more repetition in the “HTML & CSS” class. Since it was mostly review for me, the repetition got very tiresome. I’ll keep this in mind when we get into things new to me, perhaps I’ll appreciate the repetition for new concepts.

Roger Cheng

Codecademy “Make a Website” notes

I’ve just completed the “Make a Website” lesson on Codecademy, because it made sense to start at the beginning and (re)learn the fundamentals. I knew some simple HTML going in so I had expected part of it to be review and part of it to be new material.

The review part was expected: the lesson went over basic concepts of HTML tags and their hierarchical structure, then went into fine-tuning appearance via CSS.

But the new material was a surprise. After the CSS unit completed teaching about backgrounds and borders and spacing, it promised the next unit is about content and page layout. I thought “OK, good, now we’re getting into stuff I don’t know.”

The next unit began by introducing the Bootstrap framework to manage page layout. It was still an informative and fun interactive lesson, but I was left disappointed by the departure from HTML fundamentals.

It felt incomplete, like a math class that skipped doing addition with pencil and paper and instead going straight to using a calculator. Yeah, I’m probably not going to do it by hand ever again, but I wanted a lesson to teach me how to do it at least once. I would have preferred the lesson to go a bit into doing HTML layout the hard way, then say “Now that you know how to do it the hard way, let’s do it the easy way with Bootstrap.” Doing it both ways would give me a better feel of how HTML layout works and how Bootstrap makes it easier.

The Codecademy lesson worked as advertised, I’ll just have to fill this hole in my knowledge with something else.