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Self-Made Bootcamp 2020

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The lineup on Skillcrush has everything in order, but as a Break into Tech student, I can jump around without finishing modules in order. Still, it’s a good idea to finish them, so that you can earn your well-deserved certificate and a lineup of projects you made on your own for your portfolio. Once I finish the ones I really wanted to start, then I can finish the ones I skipped.

I started with their Python course a couple of weeks ago and so far, I’ve fallen in love all over again. I was struggling to learn Javascript and PHP for my personal desires of building my own WordPress themes and plugins and share (or sell) them to the masses, however, taking basic Python to having my first taste with their web frameworks such as Flask and other components like REST API 1 and actually building two projects. I also feel at ease also with using Repl.it to do all my exercises instead of pretending to be hardcore by using all the tools that I need to install on my laptop. 2

I also have more J-Pop fandoms to get into starting this year besides MADKID, and I’d like to build Python-based projects based on these fandoms (namely web apps and probably some (useless?) random data analysis among the fandoms) for practice, also store them as repos on my GitHub, and add them to my portfolio. Also, Repl.it has a beta feature that creates its own repos directly to your GitHub if you connect your GitHub to Repl.it as well with a click of a button. Here are a few that I made from my Skillcrush Python course: Spanish & French Translator, Dog Image Gallery, Female Supervillain Trading Card App (REST API).

I’m currently taking an intro to data analysis and visualization using Python and have my first taste in data science and possibly machine learning, but for now, just basic data analysis and visualization. I’m having fun so far. I also restarted again with #100DaysOfCode on Twitter, namely because of my newly-revived enthusiasm towards Python once more.

I’m still aiming to learn Javascript and PHP for WordPress development, but now there’s a new thing for WordPress called Headless WordPress development using Gatsby and REST API as well. I already had my taste of building and using REST APIs, so I’d like to take advantage of this as well.

Will write more updates as I continue on.

Updates and the “Good Ol’ Days”

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For the past month now, I’ve been focusing completely on the Skillcrush Break into Tech program. Although I’m already enrolled in this program years ago, I decided to get back into it because of their brand-new Python course. Though I’ve already taken some basic Python courses before both on Udemy and Progate, the Skillcrush Python program also includes Flask, which is a Python framework that would let you allow to build websites and web applications using Python. Who knows, maybe I may end up switching away from WordPress 1 and use a new blogging/CMS platform like Wagtail CMS. 2

But, instead of taking their Python class, I decided to refresh some more on the basics by taking their Phase 1 module first. Phase 1 consists of HTML, basic CSS, Git, and GitHub. I think having these four elements are essential to anyone starting to learn how to code, whether if it’s web design, web development, programming, etc. Most notably, Git and GitHub is now a requirement, so you can backup and store all your code, collaborate with others in making better code for yourself and for everyone else, and everything else. To be honest, because I have been somewhat inactive with coding, I have forgotten how to push all my past code to my GitHub. Good thing I backtracked and finally remembered the best practices 3 in working with Git and GitHub.

How web design/dev was back then

Right now, I’m at Phase 2, which is where Javascript, Python, React courses are under. However, I wanted to further my skills more with building responsive sites. What I meant by this is that I want to learn the newer methods in responsive web development: flexbox. There are also CSS grids and frameworks like Bootstrap right after flexbox, but because Skillcrush doesn’t have a CSS grids section, I’m going to take this course somewhere else. 4 I recently just finished flexbox and now working on building a site from scratch. 5

There’s a lot to building responsive sites than just the viewport tag attributes and media queries. Plenty. Not only that you have to make the entire site layout responsive, but also the images that you’ll be using, and that you have to code your CSS mobile-first before you start working on the desktop view of your site. If you think about it, that is a lot of work.

During the last decade of web design and development, we never thought about how we’re going to have our sites look when we use mobile devices such as a smartphone or a tablet. The default was strictly for the desktop and laptop. I even recalled that on the footer, we had to make note of the exact screen resolution that our sites look best. Even then, it was also hard, especially when not all users have the same or the latest screen resolution size on the computers they’re using from what you’re using.

There were fluid layouts and adaptive layouts for CSS that may solve this issue. There was also the time when we also had to build a separate layout for the same site for mobile viewing. The only disadvantage with doing this method is that whenever you have to update your content, you would have to do the same with your mobile layout too. That’s just extra work and it can be tedious.

I guess because of the points above that many of the hobbyist web designers back in the days quit web designing, even if this was only for a hobby. But there are many others who are willing to learn new technologies and methods to build better sites. 6 Once they get the grasp of building responsive websites, there was no need to have the extra work of building a different layout for mobile devices. Not only that, but we won’t have to make a note on our footers with “Best viewed in (screen res. sizes in px)” anymore.

Years before when I first opened The NINPOJineous, I planned to have a whole series of tutorials about responsive web design/dev methods. But, just as I’m refreshing my skills with Skillcrush’s Responsive Web Design course, this would take an entire course by itself rather than just tutorial sections. Therefore, I’m scrapping this idea and suggest to search for free responsive web design courses on Google instead. 7

Checking the W3 validator for valid HTML/CSS is still a thing today.

A few adjustments with The NINPOJineous

Lately, I’ve noticed that a few of my recent posts were not being posted on the main page of this site. I thought it was some kind of a bug from the theme framework at first, but then I realized that I rebuilt this theme from my previous blue one and imported my custom settings to this new one, so it must have been filtered by category somehow without realizing it.

I checked my standard settings on WP first and learned that I wasn’t using the default post page as my home page, but a custom static “main” page instead. That’s when I realized that some posts under certain categories were filtered. I quickly removed the filters, since all of my tutorial posts were converted into pages and are now in their separate Tutorials section. I’m still going to work on the past posts and re-organize them accordingly.

At the same time, I’m also checking out other theme frameworks too outside the Themify Builder-based themes. I still love the Themify Builder and its themes, but it’s always good to diversify your skills to other things too. I don’t need to be an expert on all of them, but knowing a bit more and gain some experience on the alternative themes and frameworks really helps a lot for your resume.

This is it for today’s updates. I will post more on my progress much later.

Skillcrush Break into Tech Phase 1: HTML/CSS

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I mentioned I returned to Skillcrush to enroll in their new Python course, but in the end, I decided to go back to basics by finishing Phase 1 of their Break into Tech (BIT) program. In every web design or web development program, this is always the first step.1 On my current level, this would be the most basic level, but personally, you can never go wrong with knowing the basics, no matter what field you’re in and what level within that field you’re currently at.

For Phase 1 of the BIT program, they consist of HTML/CSS and Git, Command Line, and GitHub. The difficult part of Phase 1 is the Git/GitHub section, as I don’t always code so much and don’t really push all my code into GitHub for my hobby side projects. 2 And because I don’t use GitHub more often, I often forget all the basic commands and how to set up repos, etc. Plus, it’s a bit embarrassing because GitHub tracks your repo transactions, and I barely have any green boxes on my transaction graph. 😖

One of my last projects for this phase one is now my “placeholder” on my upcoming portfolio domain, adrianne.dev. I think as I continue on with the further phases, this non-responsive HTML/CSS-only page will eventually be expanded.

This is a short post. Will write more on my progress later.

Community Contributions and Projects

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(This is a repost. For some reason, this post isn’t showing up on the main page of the site…)

Holy cow, it’s October! In just a few weeks, it’ll be my birthday. For the longest time, I’ve always wanted to do some open source contributions. The only issue that I have that prevented me from jumping in the open-source party was the obvious impostor syndrome and the lack of knowledge of even the most simple, basic stuff. Either that or I’m just picky with the types of projects that I want to join in as a contributor. Still, either way, with all the things I’ve learned, I really had the urge to do some contributions, most especially the most simple ones.

But, I’m writing this post today because I’m finally about to have a chance to do some contributions on open-source projects, as well as a community site project that I decided to take in as part of my honoring to my father’s legacy. So, while I’m struggling a bit to study all my coding courses, here’s my chance to finally put some of what I learned to practice, even if all of this is strictly voluntary. It’s not because I need to add something to my upcoming resume/portfolio, but somehow just contributing my time and knowledge to the open community of any kind has more meaning than just a dev earning good money and splurge on them.

Here are some of the projects that I will be doing throughout the course of time.

Tech By Choice (TBC)

I don’t think I’ve written about Tech By Choice (TBC) in the past, but I’ve transitioned my membership from the (now-defunct) GDI Oakland. 1 There is a very long story behind all this and why the Oakland Chapter was dissolved, but I’m not going to write about all of that here. Because of the internal issues that occurred with GDI and how many of the nationwide chapters were affected, TBC was created as a result of continuing the core values GDI stands for. 2

TBC was established sometime in early 2019, and because I learned that the former GDI Oakland chapter leaders joined in the board, so far there are only two chapters: Los Angeles and Oakland. Because right now that they’re in their very early steps of establishing, they are currently looking for volunteers and contributors to continue building the organization, from its website to the course development materials to product design and strategy and many other fields. There are several ways of joining in the community and make your contributions. More information on the website.

I thought about contributing to two fields: web development and course material development. I checked their GitHub repo and attended a few webinars to check out what the site is currently being run under. They are using a CMS called Wagtail, which is a CMS that was built using Python through the Django Framework. I already am familiar with basic Python, not so much the advanced stuff, but I never really delved into Python frameworks like Django and Flask. Not yet anyway. But I’m interested in learning other CMS software, so Wagtail and a few others, like Craft CMS and frameworks like GatsbyJS that are compatible with WordPress.

Therefore, I decided to start from the most basics by being a contributor to TBC’s curriculum building and development. I haven’t had all my notes and ideas organized in outlines yet, but I already submitted my first set of notes for an upcoming Introduction to WordPress for beginners. There are other subjects that I’d like to submit my outlines to but still haven’t had the time to put them together yet.

If you happen to live in the Bay Area or L.A. and are interested in entering the tech industry, regardless of your gender, race, background, orientation, etc., please join TBC. You don’t have to be an expert or have minimal knowledge of some technologies. TBC aims to build a community of aspiring techies, whether that’s in programming, technical writing, consulting, sales, product development, etc.

In the past before, I always recommended to some of my friends to join a chapter of the GDI. You can still join if you want, and if you’re in the Bay Area, the San Francisco and the San Jose chapters are still active. If you would like to know why I’m not so much hyping up about GDI as much as I do with TBC, feel free to contact me directly.

MDN Web Docs

In every coding course, I’ve taken and currently taking, all shared the most reliable, most comprehensive documentation for (almost) anything and (almost) everything web development: MDN (Mozilla Developer Network) Web Docs. It’s an exciting and a godsend documentation site for beginners, mainly because of the community behind it, its organizational structure, and its huge variety of tutorials for the absolute beginners.

The Mozillian Community is a worldwide community of volunteer developers, writers, and anyone working in the tech industry, gathering together, and pitching in their contributions to build a better web world. Contributing to the Web Docs is just one portion of what this community does. I recently signed up for an account in hopes that I can somewhat contribute something, no matter how small or large this may be.

At the moment, I seem to be much better at writing about web technologies than actually making demos through code, so I may probably be doing some editing of existing docs or maybe having some additions and alterations to keep up with the latest technologies. MDN Docs also seem to plan on expanding and not just stuck with documentation and

The Union City Friends of Sister Cities

This was actually one of my dad’s local communities he was actively involved with. After his passing months ago, I thought about doing something to honor my dad’s legacy with the things he’s done with the community. Two months ago, my mom and I attended the Friends of Sister Cities Festival to join in the festivities and to also accept a posthumous award for my dad. I enjoyed the cultural shows and the food, but when I looked at their program, I noticed that there was a site URL printed at the bottom. I visited it just to be curious, but afterward, I finally figured out what I can do for this community.

I will write this in a case study/site study post in the future, once I get everything organized. I haven’t gotten the gist on how their site is going to look like or what type of content it’ll have, but I’ll eventually work on an outline and then present it to the Sister Cities Committee and see what they think.

Return to Skillcrush (once again!)

I’m really excited about what’s to come for my contributing and making a little bit of a difference to the community. In addition to all of this, I’m returning once again to Skillcrush with their newly-launched Python Programming course. I really need to keep in touch with my old community again that helped me through my WordPress and basic Ruby education.

A few years ago, I enrolled at their new Break into Tech program, in which you can have lifetime all-access to all the available courses under this program, with some additional courses 3 for new blueprints. So far, there are four new available: UX/UI Design and Practices, Digital Marketing, React, and the newly-launched Python.

I enrolled in both React and Python, mainly because I really like messing with code. Still, I love visual designs, but sometimes it can get a little tedious in comparison to coding. I still aim to be a full-stack developer (or somewhere near that level), therefore I still have to do upkeep on both front-end, back-end, and visual designing skills altogether.

There is something about Skillcrush and their curriculum platforms that makes them so endearing. Primarily, it’s geared towards women and non-binary folk because of its themes and language, but even men can join in for its clarity, interactivity, and most of all, the active community for both students and alumni in Slack.

I will definitely write more of my progresses in the near future! Till next time!

Goodbye “The NINPOJineous”?

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I was actually pondering about this one. I really like the name The NINPOJineous because it has somewhat of a creative ring to it. It was really meant to blog about my code learning journeys and provide simple tutorials for anyone who would like to get into coding, web design, or web development as a side hobby. It was always that purpose and it’ll always be that same purpose. I will keep on going this same approach for that purpose, not just to share and teach beginners in the awesome world of web dev, but to also use this site as a personal notebook for everything that I’ve learned.

There is also one not-so-nice habit that I have when it came to starting up websites and similar side projects. I like collecting made up strange domain names that may be easy for everyone else to remember. However, that’s not always the case. Let’s take The NINPOJineous, for example. Who in the world would come up with such a strange “word” as “ninpojineous”? I mean, ninja + genius, right? Well, I did. But, after owning this domain and site for some 2-3 years now, I started to think deeper about the site name itself.

Of all the contemplating in between, here are a few reasons I’ve come up with the name The NINPOJineous:

  • The term ninja suddenly became common along with rockstar by the evolving tech industry in the last decade to mean a computer programmer, web developer, or simply a coder in general who has some technical know-how with the ins and outs of being a programmer or a developer. You know, a “cooler” term for an expert.
  • The terms ninja and rockstar are interchangeable with each other. However, I felt like rockstar programmers are the ones who want to become known among the (tech community) masses on social media and the industry as a whole, while ninjas are more of hidden introverts who like to present their works without being personally “blown up” in public. Open source contributors are a good example of what a ninja programmer is.
  • I hit a certain period in which I knew I’ve learned quite a lot from all the courses I’ve taken, however, I couldn’t figure out how I can put everything I’ve learned to practice when I don’t have a set goal (project type) on what to use it for. One example would be learning the CSS preprocessor Sass. I really love Sass, but it seems that I just can’t get used to doing other settings while I use Sass on my local environment that I eventually end up using regular CSS instead out of frustration. 😖
  • Last, but not least, whenever I see the site/blog name, my inner imposter syndrome level has been increasing very fast. I admitted on the About section that I’m nowhere near that made-up title, however, sometimes site names can truly reflect the person behind the one blogging and the one maintaining this site. In short, I don’t feel that I have the right to use this site title to name a beginner-intermediate level dev.

There are other factors added to this, but the ones above are the main ones. After doing a lot more pondering on what I could do for this site, I’ve come up with a few approaches:

  • Keep the blog/site title but be hosted on a different domain as a subdomain or a multisite.
  • Change the blog/site title but keep all the contents, then move it to the new domain.
  • Leave this blog as is and just deal with it.

Just a few minutes from writing this blog, I purchased a new domain that I feel like it would fit me personally while remaining “humble” and on the same level. I’ll be using this domain to replace the current “Coming Soon” one that I purchased some years ago 1. The new domain that I purchased is adrianne.dev.

I always combined my whole name “Adrianne Marie” into one word, however, it’s not like I use “Marie” all the time both professionally and personally. I was surprised that both adrianne.dev and adrianne.io are both available, even though I always thought that Adrianne 2 is a common female name that any Adrianne existing out there can use. Both .dev and .io are so tempting, but the difference is the price and other things.

So, I went for the .dev extension. It’s a lot more appropriate for me personally. Going back to the second bulleted list, these are the approaches I’m currently pondering about:

  • The NINPOJineous (ninpojineous.adrianne.dev)
  • The NINPOJineous @ Adrianne.dev (adrianne.dev/blog)
  • … or maybe just get rid of this name and change the name to Adrianne’s DEV Blog or something more generic.

What do you all think? I haven’t really made set decisions just yet. It’s just, for now, I want to build my portfolio/resume site on the adrianne.dev domain. That’s it for the time being.

More updates about this next time!

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