Articles
Are you too old to learn to code?
Hey, it’s Zell. Today, we a question from two students, Mark and Todd. They’re in their forties and are getting started in web development, and they are worried that they’re too old. Too old to learn or too old to get a job.
It’s funny I get this question because I felt too old to learn to code when I was 19 years old. It took me six years to before I started to code. When I started, I was 25.
Thinking logically, if I’m too old to learn when I was 19, I should be even more afraid when I was 25. But I wasn’t. I wasn’t afraid because I burned my bridges. I decided I don’t want to work in a bank and decided to learn to design and code. It was a do or die. I couldn’t worry because I had to learn enough to find a job within a year.
How to build a calculator—part 1
This is the start of a three-part lesson about building a calculator. By the end of these three lessons, you should get a calculator that functions exactly like an iPhone calculator (without the +/- and percentage functionalities).
Here’s what you’ll get:
Experiment publicly
I’m going to be honest with you. This video is probably going to suck. Why? Because I’m experimenting with something new.
I’m going to tell you what I’m experimenting with, why I’m experimenting and why you should conduct your own public experiment.
Case study—a project from hell
Project T is a project that I don’t want to remember. It was a big project for a big company—a project that I thought I would be proud to include in my portfolio; and boy, I was wrong.
Project T was bad. It lasted nine months when it was supposed to last three months. At the end, I gave a huge discount to the agency because they lost money on the project; as a result, I lost big time too.
Of the original team—a project manager, a visual designer, a UX designer and a frontend developer (me), I was the only member that survived the project till the end. Largely because of two reasons:
- I was stupid and naive
- My sense of responsibility didn’t allow me to abandon the project halfway.
By the end of the 9-month long project, I was burned out, and I quit freelancing for a year.
How do you decide what to build?
“Can you tell me what should I build? I don’t have any ideas!”
This is one of the biggest problems that stop developers from becoming better at their craft. Upon investigation, I discovered that people have ideas; they’re just afraid their ideas are bad, would fail, or nobody would use the thing they made.
These feelings are normal. We’re afraid to make things that kinda suck because we’re afraid others will shame us for it. We’re afraid the very thing we make will convince us that we’re the useless fraud that should never have existed in this world.
Then, we freeze in fear.
It’s a big problem. I can’t solve the problem for you, but I hope the lessons I share in today’s article can help you push yourself out of paralysis.
How to use a linter
Today we’re going to talk about linters.
When you use a linter, you will see red squiggly underlines all over your code. If you’re not used to using a linter yet, it’s hard not to feel like you’re doing something wrong!
You don’t have to feel that way.
A linter is there to help you write better code. There are reasons for the red squiggly underlines. Once you know what brings these underlines out, you’ll know what to ignore and what not to.
Responsive Vertical Rhythm with CSS Custom Properties and CSS Calc
Vertical Rhythm is an important concept in web design. It has the ability to bring a design together and make different elements feel consistent on the same page.
It was impossible to change Vertical Rhythm at different viewports previously, because we didn’t have the right tools. But now, with CSS Calc and CSS Custom Properties, we can change Vertical Rhythm at different viewports. This article explains how.
Useful VS Code keyboard shortcuts
Today, I want to share vs code shortcuts I use on a daily basis. Here’s a list of what we’re going to go through:
- Opening and closing the sidebar
- File explorer
- Marketplace
- Switching workspaces
- Opening the terminal
- Go to file
- Go to line
- Go to symbol
- The command palette
- Split editor
- Toggle editor group layout
- Working with tabs
- Select word
- Folding and unfolding
- Move line upwards or downwards.
- Split lines
- Pageup/pagedown
- Jump to word
- Expand region
Setting up Visual Studio Code (Part 3)—Extensions
Welcome Part 3 of the VS Code setup series.
If you haven’t watched the first or second parts yet, I suggest you go watch them first. Everything I’m sharing today builds on what I showed you before. For today, I want to share the extensions I use on a daily basis.
Intro to Object Oriented Programming in JavaScript
Object-Oriented Programming is a popular style of programming that has taken root in JavaScript since the beginning.
It’s so deeply rooted in JavaScript that many of JavaScript’s native functions and methods are written in the Object Oriented style; you’ll also find many popular libraries written in the Object Oriented style.
In this article, you’ll learn what Object Oriented Programming is and how to begin using it in JavaScript.