#006 - Active Learner of Code School
I have been digesting the familiar material from the 'Beginning JavaScript' track on Treehouse to revise myself in the fundamentals of JS programming. Now that I have settled with life at work, I now have the time, focus and growing confidence to tinker with ambitious web projects on the side. I actually have a list of stimulating projects, but I wish to mull over a few creative projects first.
Meanwhile, I have pre-ordered the 'C++ Crash Course' eBook at No Starch Press, as I want to overcome my ultimately fear to relearn C++ from the glory days of university. It's an Early Access pre-order edition, which allows me to review the first few chapters and digest the fundamentals of C++17, which is the most revised standard of the C++ programming language. The book is being written by Josh Lospinoso and I look forward to the final release.
C# and C++ are my desired mainstream programming languages that I want to learn and specialise. In recent months, I've been inspired to revisit certain components of game development (mostly shaders, procedural terrain, gameplay scripting, UI, and assistive technologies).
I am keen to use both the Unity and the Unreal engine... and Godot looks very appealing too. I am swithering in whether to learn Swift and Vulkan (if time permits), due to the Apple market, but I would rather learn Python instead, because of the computational complexities of machine learning and the ethics surrounding AI (artificial intelligence).
Nonetheless, I am very much enjoying vanilla JavaScript without touching any framework or libraries. I also want to be deliberate to only work on projects (for the time being) that utilise vanilla JavaScript, alongside HTML and CSS. I want to learn the core features of ES6 and above. I still have a collection of JavaScript videos from WesBos to watch and follow, but only once I have completed the two JavaScript tracks on Treehouse.
At the moment, I'm not too bothered about complex projects or the trending libraries and framework like React and Vue. Ideally, I want to be agnostic with regards to programming languages, as I want to focus on good programming practices. I also want to write code that works, whilst exploring Easter-egg options to grow my codeset and projects for potential new features that I may wish to add later.
As dull as it may seem for more experienced programmers who would rather work on mega-complex projects that resemble Google's DeepMind, I am currently working on a 'Deluxe Quiz'.
This past weekend, I was exploring a gameplay mechanic that would randomise the questions from a numbered stack, as opposed to displaying a quiz in the same order. I know in theory, it doesn't make for an interesting discussion, but in principal it is challenging to implement such features, whilst seeing a project function as it should. There are other features that I want to test the logic, before I build code around the DOM elements. I'll give myself to the end of this month and see where it leads...
~Richard