Journey to a Full Stack

v3.5 Overhaul

noreply@blogger.com (Over-Coded) — Sat, 11 Jan 2020 16:18:00 +0000

These changes are mostly about the GitHub Repository

Welcome again to more changes and more personal hiccups. For starters please take a look inside the folder structure. We have 4 main folders now, we need to keep the workflow to a sane level, so let's explore. Improvements are the first and it is all about contribution. Simple? Just make a file with your feedback or changes inside and push it. After that, I will make all the needed edits and place your name inside the Contributor's list. Simple. Also note that I will try to contact you before I make any changes, so there is that. Onwards to the Legacy folder, very self-explanatory but for the sake of reference and all that. All of the older files are now in one place. Moving on to the WiP Folder, which stands for Work in process. Holding up all the projects I am working on right now, articles in the works, todo list, templates, etc. And lastly, this is from my beloved significant other, the RiO Folder, Standing for reviews in Order. Cause inside the BlogSpot page, after viewing my last lesson about blog structure and post, I made some changes. And to clarify I have added tags to the reviews, posting them as separate posts. Effectively creating a sorting system and separate uploads to social media. Meaning better advertisement and social strategy. C/V will hold now all links and references to lessons, and the first steps will be as of now a journal recording, holding changes in free write. That's about it.

Updates

noreply@blogger.com (Over-Coded) — Thu, 09 Jan 2020 17:47:00 +0000

We made some updates to the original blog.

Meaning that now reviews will be posted in separate posts with tags.
Click on the tags to view the appropriate posts or the complete pages containing all the posts in order.

Advancing through Markdown with breeze...

noreply@blogger.com (Over-Coded) — Thu, 09 Jan 2020 16:54:00 +0000

19) - Markdown - Advanced #1
20) - Markdown - Advanced #2

Again this is for reference as well, I was in the need of checklists, and this was my answer. As for the second link, I've decided to include it as an extra. How to create a vertical multi check box inside a line. And that was it, this covers in extend the basic markdown we need, some advanced bits and some extras. Also a reference card, well to be honest these are small reads, not really an review each, so consider this to be a big review broken down in sections. Next up is Licenses, how, what, whys, and what to avoid. Have a nice night.

Last Of the Mark.....

noreply@blogger.com (Over-Coded) — Thu, 09 Jan 2020 16:53:00 +0000

18) - Markdown - Basics #4

This is your bread and butter right there, bookmark this and save it under a cheat sheet folder or something. This is a list that contains the most basic syntax. It is light to read as well, read it a couple of times and practice the syntax, as you type markdown you will be using this list quite often, until not. This is the same with mostly everything we will learn so cheat sheets are the way to go for the long run.

3 Way....

noreply@blogger.com (Over-Coded) — Thu, 09 Jan 2020 16:53:00 +0000

17A) - Markdown - Basics #2A

Tables, what are tables inside a text document; Tables are like drawing a sketch, with pencil and paper. And instead of using vertical and horizontal lines we use hyphens and pipes. |-, Yes it is as simple as that, just write your info and use hyphens | to separate them horizontally, and pipes - under them for vertical separation. And there your have it, the syntax picks it up, a table, magic happens.

17B) - Markdown - Basics #2B

There we go again a bit in depth. I can recognize ruby and JavaScript, so all in all the gist of it is: That a triple back tick before and after, create a box which can house code. Writing code that needs to be displayed, instead of processed. For example writing the bold syntax tag instead of making the text bold. Not so techie now e?

17C) - Markdown - Basics #2C

Like before, a bit techie but not so much. This one lets you know that there are automatic methods of link shortening, and auto link reference. What does that mean exactly, means that you can write for example: #26 and it is the same as https://github/jlord/sheetsee.js/issues/26, yeah, well it is life saving. Truth is I can't quite make out all of it, but as we said before the important bits. We need just as much info as possible but not the heavy things.

More more more

noreply@blogger.com (Over-Coded) — Thu, 09 Jan 2020 16:52:00 +0000

17) - Markdown - Basics #2

This is about advanced formatting and syntax, it is split into three different sections with three sub links. First about how to organize your information with tables, then about the creation and highlighting of code blocks and lastly about auto linking and URLs. Let us begin with the tables, cause this is a really small page as well.

hmmm

noreply@blogger.com (Over-Coded) — Thu, 09 Jan 2020 16:52:00 +0000

16) - Markdown - Basics #1

This link is really small, based and focused more in the graphical interface of the website. Yeap we are talking about the website, doesn't need any syntax. It is the most simple way to format your text. Press a button and the magic happens. Simple and effective. It shows and explains to you, what every button in the ribbon does. In case we bored, well not much else going on here let us move on to the next one.

Ouch.....

noreply@blogger.com (Over-Coded) — Thu, 09 Jan 2020 16:51:00 +0000

15) - Markdown - Advanced #3

This is the first link and it is just my luck to be a wee bit advanced. How so? Because here we are into GFM, Git Flavored Markdown, a dialect of markdown. Meaning it has a base of Markdown, hence and the name of course, and some customized commands used to make communicating with GitHub. And so this is a lesson taken later after some more markdown done. That been said let us proceed to the the actual lesson. We will be switching the terminology for starters cause it's wrong. Commands are as I call them is the syntax and the semantics of the language. Semantics are for a rather extensive review, cause it is a category on its own, having semantics for everything, it seemed to me that it is very important, in so it will be covered on it's own separate category of skills. Now back to the lesson at hand. Personally I went through it and it was very difficult to understand it. So forth make a note of it. We will use it again in future reference, as of now it is not needed atm. Learning actual HTML is more important. We need some basics, in order to get started. After that it is all a matter of getting into the Git more seriously. We can use git to learn languages as well, so it is a win win, like typing is constantly improved.

First one

noreply@blogger.com (Over-Coded) — Thu, 09 Jan 2020 16:50:00 +0000

14) - Markdown - Basics #1

Alrighty first one we are gonna cover is the basics of markdown. If you notice some similarities with HTML, it is cause they are in fact almost the same, HTML and Markdown are part of same genre of languages, Markup. The way I understood it is, that you mark specific words or text, with special tags. And the text takes the properties of the tag. Ether that is to hide the link into a disguise text, add an image, make lists, or quoting text. Different from HTML not in how it is handling the text but more actually in the commands used to mark your text. Here an example:

```

HTML bold tag <b>text</b>
Markdown bold tag **text**

```

Different commands, Different types or dialects of a language, same results. Now let me explain it properly, is it a method of text formatting for having structured documents. Website = Text Document with structure and a formation, a way of presenting organized information. Time to move on, four links in the bottom of the site and the first from the top is our pick.

7 Courses

noreply@blogger.com (Over-Coded) — Thu, 09 Jan 2020 16:50:00 +0000

These are 7 sources used to learn the basics of markdown, and some more special like creating lists with multiple check boxes in a horizontal line. I know how to do them vertically, but the horizontal was a problem. Lets analyze them properly, one by one mind you, the order might not be perfect. Until the curriculum is updated and I can make some sense of it. IF you are following me in this, until my system is perfected, please bear with me, this is trial and error. Also please contact me via any means of social, i would love to have a discussion and some fresh ideas, approaches etc. Now let us begin.

Readme of a read me ?

noreply@blogger.com (Over-Coded) — Thu, 09 Jan 2020 16:48:00 +0000

13) - Basic Format & Structure of a Readme.

Welcome back, this is the first side lesson, it is about the readmes. Apparently, and not without reason, readmes have standards. Makes sense but I did not know about it. Easy lesson, probably about half an hour or so, clear and builds up real fast. First about the readmes, then about layout and after that how to represent it. Then moved to knowledge-wikis, how to build and construct them properly (markdown) and some more extra info related to the next review. All in all it is not exactly a lesson, more like some guidelines, guidelines on the bare minimums of readmes. I consider it more like standards of the internet, or as Joel might have said it "The absolute bare minimums every developer should now about Readmes". Good conduct, read it, learn what a readme me is, the reason for existence, etc. You know, I have some years on me, some years of home computer repairs going around folks places and repairing or making changes to personal computers. The reason I am telling you this, is cause due to this when a readme is on my way it gets tossed instantly. That did change after that. It is now my firm believe, that readmes are a very important part of any project. Please add it to the requirements. Licenses as well, more on that on another article. Next is Markdown.

OH SHIT?! GIT!

noreply@blogger.com (Over-Coded) — Thu, 09 Jan 2020 16:47:00 +0000

* H1) - https://ohshitgit.com <-- Honorable Mention 1

And there we got to, perhaps and not only, the best eye-candy of an article/tutorial that i could ever lay eyes on to read. Yes I am talking about all those situations where all that frustration i had with git, commands, console, integrations, migraines with VSCode, were layed to rest. My own slice of heaven, reference to season 4 Rick n Morty, personal pooping place! Not only the article maintains a keen sense of humour that pleases even the hardest costumers, but it also provides you with a cheat sheet of the commands that will save you from an OH SHIT?! GIT! Situation. Also examples, ways to use them and a peace of git you will never forget. Read it, Highly recommended as well and also a excellent bookmark, kudos you get to name it.

Advanced Git

noreply@blogger.com (Over-Coded) — Thu, 09 Jan 2020 16:46:00 +0000

12) - https://lab.github.com/githubtraining/introduction-to-github

Finally the work and holidays left and i was able to get around this little gem. It's GitHub's very own personal learn-and-have-fun-by-doing playground. With automated projects and real projects, once you get the hang of a language. This allows you to contribute in active projects and learn how to behave in a team. We did the first courses only, stopping at the advanced stuff. It will allow us to get them at a later time. For the courses we did, they really did give us a really fun and nice change of pace. I got so into the game part, only to later discover the extent of actual knowledge I have gotten by "gaming". The truth came out while writing this review... Figures... All in all a highly recommended set of lessons. Go on, go git Gitfied.

Motivational Course

noreply@blogger.com (Over-Coded) — Thu, 09 Jan 2020 16:46:00 +0000

11) - What you need before you start Programming.

Lets recap that, this is a video that I watched on mistake.
The way i understood it was that it is a video about what we need, well what anyone watching that video needs, before you actually start teaching yourself web development. But tools, soft skills, something along the lines of practical? and we got a motivational video. Well I dont actually hold any love for those types of videos, i just cant watch them. Anyhow I watcched it, seek bar on the move, skipping this, you know the works. And i am impressed, helped me organize my path, make goals, visuallize my target and carve a path to it. I cant believe i am saying this but please take your time and do it, i did, twice and one more to write this. They do help, and if you are a tough cookie and on your way to become an Full stack or even an HTML proof reader, begin there, step uno. Colour me surprised.

Creative Writing

noreply@blogger.com (Over-Coded) — Thu, 09 Jan 2020 16:45:00 +0000

10)- Creative Writing by Margaret Atwood.

A rather captive set of videos, the majority of them are about actual creative writing. Rational, yeah well, I expected as much. The reason for watching it, even thou I need more article writing than creative writing, was to widen my horizons in writing in general. As for an entry video in writing, it was pretty good. The author has an amazing way to keep you captivated and lost in the words, it is like a big story. Once you get dragged into darkness suddenly a light. This is some of the most common ways to describe getting lost while reading a book. Hearing all those ways to write, it was inspiring, and very educational. Talking about characters, how to detail about them and talk about them. Foods they like, activities, how many layers of deep knowledge has to be put inside, even a timeline to help you remember how to not forget dates. Then there is the clothing and how many views of perspective we can apply to written word. About using words in a messy order to creating suspense and how that attracts people to keep reading. Lots of different methods to increase your ideapool, how to be creative and also to keep researching, writing and reading, reading is for the most part the best way to replenish that idea pool. I sure need to be keeping post-it notes on me and a pen, to make drafts throughout the day. How to untangle your story and keep the flow going in a way that makes readers wanting more. That how when we keep exploring and digging more, the more we have to give. As a developer you are required to be working and maintain large times of concentration, so the advice to be prepared for the interruptions is a very good one. Of course we also need to hear conversations, dialogues in order to analyze dialects, slang and way of the common tongue. I personally found it to be very interesting and I kept coming back for more. Thank you Margaret Atwood, it was mind forming.

And more Encodings

noreply@blogger.com (Over-Coded) — Thu, 09 Jan 2020 16:44:00 +0000

7) - https://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-what-is-encoding
8) - https://www.w3.org/International/getting-started/characters
9) - https://www.w3.org/International/tutorials/tutorial-char-enc/

https://www.w3.org is the go website for all things programming, literally. Everything i have used from there is top notch, well writen, it is simply a treasure. Now on to our review, we began reading about whether we should care about encondings or not, and following the list of links for the all information we needed, lead to a alot more than the three tutorials almost 8 pages filled with all angles about encodings. Encodings are used, and you should care about them cause if it is not english you want to use, then the display will be art and not letters. Not to mention search engines.... that got your attension! Words or characters are grouped to sets, and ascociated with numbers called code points, ciphers. So to display a unique character you need it's cipher. When you gibberish instead of words, thats a unicode problem. Thats the non techie way, the rest we got was in bytes and bits, if they are high or low in the memory, and setting bytes to letters. The promises: We will have a clear idea about what factors in the choice of unicode, when and how to declare a charset for HTML and CSS documents. What is byte-order mark or BOM and how it is affecting you. Understanding the escapes and how to use them. Well to be honest except the escapes, the rest was done. It is probably my fault will redo them in youtube videos. Also <meta charset="utf-8"/> the first line of code, proud of that.
And this is were the broswer stops loading the page and restarts, with the unicode. This is cause we need to declare it in the begining of the document. See? Just read it. Something will stick. Okay reading this again in order to get some info and re understand, i understood what escapes are and how to use them. Amazing W3c you rock.

Time for encodings

noreply@blogger.com (Over-Coded) — Thu, 09 Jan 2020 16:44:00 +0000

6) - https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2003/10/08/the-absolute-minimum-every-software-developer-absolutely-
positively-must-know-about-unicode-and-character-sets-no-excuses/

Well a rather funky tutorial, has a taste of humor that might not appeal to everyone. I don't know if there is a bare minimum in anything, and I don't know what the heck encodings is. But Joel says he can rectify that, and trust me he does. It had some techniques inside i can't say, but skipping past the terms and a bit math, I got it. How from ASCII we went to the Oem and later to Unicode. Speaking of which Unicode was the attempt to unify all codes. All letters in Unicode are assigned to an id, named code point. Eventually, all words are a set of code points. Now on to encoding, first, the Byte Order Mark, which adds an EF or FF to the code point, telling you if it's up in the memory or low. Also, UTF-8 with 1-byte storage on 8 bytes. UTF-7, UCS-4 and plenty. After reaching the end of Joel's guide, we know what encoding is, how to use it and how to effectively debug encoding errors. Also a reference to the Unicode map. Id dare says that Bare Minimums are achieved. And a highly recomended one, its excellent.

Git it out.

noreply@blogger.com (Over-Coded) — Thu, 09 Jan 2020 16:42:00 +0000

5) - https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/the-beginners-guide-to-git-github/ #4 Basics Done.

Well, useful but I could not follow it via the correct order. Around half of the guide, the instructions tell you to add a sample.html. All cool, but the surprise came when you actually have to create it first, inside the local repo directory. Yeah, welcome to the frustration, the newbie got stymied. After a good day searching the most creative key words ever, I asked in the QA community. Namely Stack Overflow, a specialized central to ask anything programming-wise. There are communities about every subject inside Stack Exchange, the mother site of QaAs. Wanna ask something about something? Go there, the first choice. So after a question, some edits, some more searching, I was tinkering inside bash and an error came up. Searching about it, came to answer my own question and solve all my problems with git and that bash. Ending my frustration and the tutorial. Coding is all about experimenting, asking, problem-solving, and using communities. So I have a feeling that today we did all of that. Mission accomplished and some extra, "https://github.com/firstcontributions/first-contributions". This little gem provided us with the umpf we needed, and also supplemented this course lovely. Pulling a repo, accepting an issue and solving it, pushing and getting a pull request, waiting for the acceptance of edits, and thus making the first active contribution ever. I would say at this point that we have completed the basics, with git, and that we now need more specialized knowledge, more on skillset.

Some Vscode Essentials

noreply@blogger.com (Over-Coded) — Thu, 09 Jan 2020 16:42:00 +0000

4) - https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/editor/versioncontrol #3 Basic after some VScode Tut.

This was one more step up, inside the basics always. We delved inside the VSCode, the text editor of choice, more on that later, there are over 6 lessons to be covered here. Some basic integration is not bad to know. So all in all our editor of choice has all the functions already, just some configurations. The new introduction was the extensions inside the editor, more as we go there. For the time being, "Github Pull requests" the extension, it allows you to process and accept pull requests from within our IDE. Also now we see, in the status bar below the text editor, the username we have inside GitHub. another new tool to have around is the Azure DevOps. Another online host of personal repositories, which connects perfectly with your GitHub account, and your Microsoft account. vscode + Github + Azure DevOps. before the question "why another one like GitHub?", I think it will have its uses. We will keep it around and see in time. Could be a Gem in the long run, or a powerful portable solution, time will tell. I wish I had some training in VScode, waiting for another chair, my house, and my multi-monitor setup.

Gitified

noreply@blogger.com (Over-Coded) — Thu, 09 Jan 2020 16:41:00 +0000

3) - https://guide.freecodecamp.org/git #3 - Git - Starter. 2# - Vscode - Starter

Now, this is what I call entry-level, the most useful guide so far. I can feel the entry-level now, we got some basic concepts and 101s. Git is a distributed control system that helps multiple users or coders have access to a file or program (hosted online on repositories) and modify it. Plain? Simple? Yes but not so much. What shines is in the inner workings, and in this git-case, the impeccable history, and logging, containing date, time changes and comments. Imagine 100 people proofreading the same page at the same time, in different places. After they are done they send the pages to the author to review and accept or refuse the changes. This is git, takes all pages, compares the changes, checks the reasons for the changes, merges the changes with the original page, and voila 1 page merged with 100+ corrections. Ending in a clandestine document passed by 100 sets of eyes, and also a history behind it, all the changes that it went through from the original state, along with the reasons for the edit, the date/hour and the author of the changes. All that in real-time, connecting all of the worlds. Clone - Modify - Stage - commit - push. Five words are all I have.

More Git!!

noreply@blogger.com (Over-Coded) — Thu, 09 Jan 2020 16:41:00 +0000

2) - https://stackoverflow.com/questions/315911/git-for-beginners-the-definitive-practical-guide
#1 - Git - Advanced.

The second guide, a google result, it turned out to be practical as advertised. But the order is a bit weird, I went from configuring the git to searching terms I had no clue what they were. Well, all in all, it is rich and content friendly. It is not for me at this point, so I will keep it around as a reference and for random questions. Well as of now, I have visited this guide many times, I have added that it helped me a great many times. Not only the guide itself but also the comments, you canfind plenty of resources, answering to some more inquisitive minds.

Starting Git

noreply@blogger.com (Over-Coded) — Thu, 09 Jan 2020 16:40:00 +0000

1) - https://guides.github.com/activities/hello-world/ #1 - Git - Starter

First guide on git. The very manual, learned to created repositories, pull, merge and edit changes. I can call it the very basic training of git, the barebones. More than 10 minutes needless to say. I took my time and ended up in half an hour's worth of course. That's me I guess. Also to note that the guide is based on website control, no command line support. Also the first Article. Well.

How To Write a Better Blog Post.

noreply@blogger.com (Over-Coded) — Thu, 09 Jan 2020 16:38:00 +0000

Viral blog writing 101 by Wolken Navarro.

Blogging, Blog post Writing, viral.

Welcome! According to today's schedule, it is a blog day. And this course was the best option for a beginner's class. So without further ado, let us proceed to the overview.

It begins with a very basic and short part about how your blog should be structured precisely. Moving on from general blog strategy to post writing strategy. Covering everything from the headline picking to grammar checking tools. There is even a part that covers the angles on post writing. Simple, detailed and not very long as well, about 73 minutes.

And as I mentioned before this lesson is around 1 hour and 13 minutes. Not very long considering the output of info it has. Very detailed and he also has a very clear voice which makes the lesson so much better. On to the actual thing now. After the introduction video, there are some basic blog structure rules. The category of your blog, subcategory's and topics. Closing in with a few tips on how to pick an angle, for writing your post. Followed by a template, and to be honest that was a very good idea, and explanation's for each part. First up is the headline name picking and some suggestions, cause the actual headline strategies are explained more detailed in the ending videos. The new pickup was: SEO - Search Engine Optimization, which is used by search engines to find keywords and makes your post more easily discoverable. Again, more about that in later courses. Onwards to the introduction of the post, an anecdote or a short story. Or a Nutgraph, meaning a Post in a nutshell paragraph. To a transition line that makes getting into the main body of the post more smooth. This is followed by a few supporting key points to solidify your post. The closing section is an epilogue with a punchline, or as Wolken tells it, a CTA, a Call To Action line. A short punchy and powerful sentence to entangle your readers. Down the line is all about having a flow in your writing and sticking to the point. Finally, there are some tips on how to clean and perfect your post, and also the tools for proofreading.

All in all, is very engaging while viewing it, I had ideas hitting me all over the place. Also, a template and structured writing came out of it. Very recommended and many thanks to Wolken Navarro for making this course.

How to Write a Better Blog Post. New Review!!

noreply@blogger.com (Over-Coded) — Thu, 09 Jan 2020 14:49:00 +0000

There we go, back and updated with a new lesson. Please enjoy reading and leave some feedback.
Viral Blogging 101
Please share us in your social media, someone is always interested.

Hey

noreply@blogger.com (Over-Coded) — Wed, 08 Jan 2020 07:08:00 +0000

Good morning, all is good and the winter is relenting as usual. Despite the cold weather, my night was busy doing some cosmetic changes. Some of you might have noticed, caught some views between refreshing the browser. Before that happened thou, with a lot of help, a weekly schedule was made! The reason for telling you this is because thanks to that we squeezed in some "extra" learning.

Two new video courses have been added to the list. First about Viral Blogging 101, and another about learning. Yep About learning, got your attention; stay tuned for the reviews are coming.

(RSS Feed is up as well)