Luke Gabrieli

Thoughts

A blog through Code Fellows.

Code Fellows | Week 8

Posted on Friday, July 31

Final project week! Where did the time go?

For our final project, I worked with two students from the JavaScript class to build an application that visually plots Twitter information on a map so users can find what is happening in their city. For now, it will be limited to only Seattle, but I would like to eventually span it across all cities. The best part is that everything happens in real time! Make sure to watch the map and new icons will appear as people tweet (permitting they have geolocation settings turned on).

It utilizes and exciting mix of everything we have worked on these past seven weeks, including HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Angular, and SASS to access and present information built by my two partners. It is now up and running at www.goindulge.herokuapp.com. Let me know what you think!

Code Fellows | Week 7

Posted on Friday, July 24

This week was devoted to learning AngularJS, an exciting framework that helps you build single web page applications.

It took a little bit of getting used to at first, but I think I'm starting to get the hang of this Angular stuff. The part I like most is that you can easily repeat information coming from a database using only a few lines of code (specifically using the data-ng-repeat feature).

I'm excited to start my project week next week and use this new Angular knowledge of mine to build something that people can actually use.

Code Fellows | Week 6

Posted on Friday, July 17

Ahhhh. Back to CSS, something that makes sense to me. This week was devoted to learning SASS, a language designed to organize your CSS (something much needed)!

At first, I figured "Who needs SASS when we already know how to organize CSS using principles of BEM and SMACSS. However, I was quickly proven wrong based on the vast capabilites that SASS contains.

I'm still amazed by the fact that you can use JavaScript functions directly in SASS! It's the only language that represents function and presentation, which could be a blessing and a curse. One extremely helpful thing we learned was how to organize function and presentation in your SASS using partials and directories. That way, you can keep your @mixins and other functions separated from your @includes and presenation.

Code Fellows | Week 5

Posted on Friday, July 10

This week, we started diving into the back end of the web. Oh no! Actually, it wasn't that bad. Although, I have much more respect for back end developers now.

We were introduced and spent the majority of the week playing around in NodeJS, the server side JavaScript library. We also spent time using ExpressJS to create our own simple servers. Lastly, we touched on MongoDB and Mongoose and learned how to set up simple databases, as well as access them from the front end.

This was by far my most challenging week in school. I've never really played around in the back end of the internet, so this was all brand new information to me. I think that it's great we touched on all this though, because now I have a better understanding of how it works and if I experience it down the road, I won't be so surprised and perplexed.

Code Fellows | Week 4

Posted on Friday, July 3

Project week! This was by far my favorite week spent at Code Fellows so far. We got to take all of our skills learned in the first three weeks and apply them towards a midterm project.

My group chose to create a web application that allows tennis enthusiasts in the greater Seattle area to connec with other users and set up matches to play. We named it Fuzzle, which references the fuzz found on tennis balls.

We knew we had lofty goals for this project, but only had 4 days to finish it. On top of using all of the skills learned thus far to create an application that solves a real world issue, the most valuable lesson I learned from this assignment was time management. We could have spent days, even weeks, perfecting everything, but needed to create a minimum viable product within the time frame alloted.

Code Fellows | Week 3

Posted on Friday, June 26

Week 3 - JavaScript week. Between the three basic building blocks of websites and web applications, JavaScript is definitely the most challenging to me.

I was a bit anxious coming into this week, but came out a pro. I spent extra time this week studying, espcially using JS objects and functions, and now have a solid understanding of the language. It's quite intriguing to me how complicated JavaScript is, yet how simple jQuery is.

My biggest accomplishment from this week though was learning how to build RESTful API applications from scratch. Using AJAX and JSON files, I now have the knowledge to build web applications that don't need to be redirected to another url. They simply act and update within the current window you are browsing in. How neat!

Code Fellows | Week 2

Posted on Friday, June 19

This week was all about CSS. We learned all about the wonders of proper styling and positioning techniques.

I can now see why most developers prefer not to use CSS; For the most part, it is a very unorganized language and you can get lost in your own code really quick if you don't pay attention.

Some of my favorite topics were CSS animations and transitions. It is exciting knowing that many website animations can be triggered using CSS, which can drastically enhance the performance of your site. I also enjoyed learning about flexbox, but it is quite frustrating that Safari and iOS still need webkit prefixes in order for it work.

Code Fellows | Week 1

Posted on Friday, June 12

Week 1 of my Code Fellows Developement Accelerator was great! During the first week, we spent the majority of our time talking about HTML5.

I especially loved learning about ARIA roles. I think it is crucial that all websites are accessible to the general population, including those who can't see.

We also learned the new core semantics of HTML5, including audio, video, header, footer, article, and section tags. Now that I've got my HTML down, I'm excited to tackle CSS next week.

Code Fellows | Week 0

Posted on Friday, June 5

Well, today is my last day at Votiv and I am excited, nervous, anxious, and sad all at the same time. It was my first full time job out of college and everybody there became close friends of mine.

With that being said, I can't wait until next Monday for the first day of class at Code Fellows. My new career path begins in three days and I couldn't be more excited.

I've got most of my class pre-work done and I am going to finish up the rest over the weekend. I can't wait to start building beautiful websites using clean, efficient, and organized code. Bring it on!