Moving along with the Bootcamp

I finished their entire Python program (from their intro, web dev w/ Flask, data visualizations) and I really had a lot of fun with it. It also gave me the opportunity to redo my single-page portfolio with a lot of projects that I built using Python and its modules. My aim was to strictly become a web developer, but I really had a lot of fun with data visualizations and a little bit of data analysis using Python. Maybe I should also think about taking data science courses as well and also have a chance to be a data scientist.

In a way, you could say that I’ve fallen in love with Python. Initially, I wanted to be a WordPress web developer, since I’ve gotten used to WordPress and I really do love WordPress. But Python was a complete eye opener for me and I’m now considering practicing and build more projects – possibly building my own blog software – using Python, Flask, or even with Django. I haven’t started learning Django just yet, but very soon, I will.

I still have yet to add and update more on the portfolio site, such as adding screenshot thumbnails of each project, as well as cleaning up and organize my About section. The content is all in there, but it still needs some fixing and final touches before I can finally declare it as my professional portfolio.

Right now, I went back to working on their Introduction to Javascript course. I started it some years ago but never really had the time to continue and finish it. I don’t know how many Javascript courses I’ve already taken, but no matter how much I’ve taken these intro to JS courses several times, I forget them and then feel unmotivated that I end up signing up for another intro to JS course and then feel like everything is new again. I guess you could say that in other words, I don’t know how or where to start applying everything I learned to the projects I’ve always wanted to built.

I hope that soon, I’ll be able to go through this intro course and finally take their React course. From there, we’ll see where I will end up. I may take the WordPress course again because since then, WP has upgraded so much, which includes the new Gutenberg Block system, so now everything I’ve learned from the past is not very much valid today.

Lastly, there will be another CSS course to be added to the program, and it will solely focus on flexbox and CSS Grids. It may even include preprocessors like Sass and LESS, but for sure, there will be more focus on flexbox and CSS Grid. I plan to enroll in this one too.

Updates on Python

I started renting/purchasing a few eBooks that focus on certain aspects of Python, namely with both building web apps and focus more on data visualizations and dabble more with data science. I’m not very good with math, but hopefully data science, however much I get into it, would probably inspire me to take general math courses again. To put it in easier words, the advanced college math courses, like linear algebra, calculus, discrete math, maybe statistics (again).

I haven’t started with it yet, but I know I have to. I’d like to learn Django and be more familiar with it. The local tech meetup group that I’m a member of Tech By Choice has their official website/blog run by Wagtail CMS, a blogging software built using Python and Django. There’s a ton of courses and tutorials on how to build your own blogging software using Python, but so far, the popular ones I’ve seen were built using Django. The only framework I’ve been exposed so far from the Skillcrush Python course was Flask. Maybe I’ll focus more on Flask first before I jump into Django.

My new portfolio site

I’ve finally finished (at least the main parts) of my new portfolio site. It now has a brand-new sweet URL too. It’s based on a base template and just basically added and modified a few things here and there to make it look a lot more personal. I’ve incorporated my past scenery/landscape digital artwork and created a vector version of one of my handwritten signatures as my logo to reflect the personal bit while still providing information about my work, my skills, and such. I tried to make it a lot more minimal as possible, but I’m infamous for being too wordy of my content, so I’ve got a lot of work needed to be done here. For instance, I still need to add thumbnail images for all of the projects I’ve done, tightening up my "Intro" and "About" sections, and so on and so forth.

Conclusion

Lastly, not too long ago, I’ve given this blog the ability to support Markdown. I started writing (fan)fics using lightweight writing software that’s in plain text and also provide Markdown support. I’ve written a "tutorial" on Markdown here, but I haven’t really utilized it as much because I was so used to writing everything on the CMS’s interface. Now that I’ve gotten used to Markdown, lately I’ve been writing a few of my blog posts in Markdown that I thought that it’d be easier if I write using Markdown on the CMS interface as well. I just turned it on from the Jetpack plugin.

That’s it for now. I don’t have a lot of details to write about, but this is just a quick overall review on my current progress.