Forem: Lauren Fosgett

100 Days of Learning - Days 16 and 17

Lauren Fosgett — Thu, 27 Jan 2022 23:33:48 +0000

Hello and welcome to my 100 Days of Learning challenge! Yesterday was a fun day, I started digging into Raymond Camden's guide on setting up a blog with 11ty (linked down below).

It was going really well until I tried combining tips from other resources and made a mess of the project structure, which introduced a bunch of errors. I didn't even realize I had gone so far astray, and Raymond himself helped me figure out where I'd gone wrong. (Thanks, Raymond!!)

I ended out the day with the first chunk of the project working, with a list of posts and post excerpts.

Today, I wrapped up the Eleventy guide including updating the site UI, added git, pushed my changes up to Github and deployed to Netlify. Phew! I didn't end up implementing RSS in this starter project, but I think that would be worth exploring another time. I have a much better understanding of how Eleventy structures your files, and the refresher on git/Github/deploying to Netlify was much needed.

This has been a really fun project and I'm learning a lot!

Next I'll explore using a "one click deploy" themed Eleventy starter project and poking around that. If I like what I see and can figure out how to use it, then I might just use that to set up my personal blog. Otherwise, I'll start from scratch and redo my personal site to include the new blog. It might be worth updating my personal site anyway, if only for the practice.

Here are some of the resources I'm using:

A Complete Guide to Building a Blog with Eleventy
11ty Tutorial: Cranking Your Jamstack Blog Up to 11! (I didn't realize this tutorial was also by Raymond!)
Raymond Camden's Blog
11ty Docs
Let's Learn Eleventy! | Learn with Jason

Photo by J. Kelly Brito on Unsplash

100 Days of Learning - Day 15

Lauren Fosgett — Wed, 26 Jan 2022 02:13:57 +0000

Hello and welcome to my 100 Days of Learning Challenge!

In the last few weeks, I've explored vanilla Javascript, learning SQL for work, and video editing, but this week I'm shifting my focus.

I'm going to build a personal blog using Eleventy!

Since I already host my personal site on Netlify, I thought using 11ty would be a great fit. I want to create my own platform for sharing blog posts, especially as I explore non-tech related topics that I don't think would be appropriate or relevant to share here on DEV.

I've tried to get an 11ty blog set up in the past, but I struggled to get it into a usable state. This is mainly because 1) I had no idea what I was doing and 2) I didn't know what I didn't know or where to get started. Looking back, the biggest blockers were probably not understanding how an 11ty project is structured, and then not knowing how to make it look good.

There's some knowledge gaps I've had to fill, and I'm in a much better place to tackle this project. I'm more comfortable with Git, deploying projects to Netlify, setting up dev environments, and learning how to learn. It also helps that there are even more resources for learning how to set up a blog with 11ty now.

I was even considering writing my own series on getting started with 11ty, but then I came across @raymondcamden's comprehensive guide to getting started in 11ty that he just posted about a week ago. Truly perfect timing! I will probably also take a stab at writing my own guide, since there are some things I'd like to highlight as a true beginner while they're fresh on my mind.

My plan for this project is to do some research (in progress) and make sure I understand the things that caught me up the last time I attempted this, and I'll get to building this out tomorrow. I intend to have something working, and looking pretty, by next week.

Here are some of the resources I'm using:

A Complete Guide to Building a Blog with Eleventy
11ty Tutorial: Cranking Your Jamstack Blog Up to 11! (I didn't realize this tutorial was also by Raymond!)
Raymond Camden's Blog
11ty Docs
Let's Learn Eleventy! | Learn with Jason

Header by Green Chameleon on Unsplash

100 Days of Learning - Days 7 - 14

Lauren Fosgett — Wed, 19 Jan 2022 04:26:10 +0000

Today's post will be a little different. The past week has been a little crazy for me - I took 6 days off work, and on day one I started feeling sick. Perfect timing, ha. I was only unwell for a few days, probably some kind of cold (thankfully, I tested negative for COVID and the flu!), but it disrupted my flow of how I usually spend my days off.

I didn't end up spending any time revisiting any coding last week, and I'm perfectly happy with that.

I did however, end up spending my time learning video editing! I even published my first Youtube video! However, my Youtube channel isn't dev- or tech-related, so I likely won't share it here. I am proud of the effort I've put into learning these skills just the same.

I am also considering moving this blog away from DEV.to and instead hosting it elsewhere, since I expect my learning focuses to meander between coding and other topics. I'm not sure that this is the best place to continue posting, but it was the easiest way to get me to actually start.

Thanks for joining me, I'll be back to learning SQL and JavaScript very soon.

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

100 Days of Learning - Day 6

Lauren Fosgett — Mon, 10 Jan 2022 16:04:35 +0000

Hello and welcome to my 100 Days of Learning challenge!

Today I am continuing my efforts in learning SQL for work. I'm a business analyst so I don't get to do any coding in my day-to-day, instead I manage my team's webdev projects (I'm basically product owner/product manager/project manager all rolled into one). I'm excited to get a better understanding of the queries I've been copy-pasting (and start writing my own queries!) and use this to transition into learning more about how the databases are structured in our projects.

(As a note - I drafted this on Friday and then my computer BLUE SCREENED, so I'm catching up on my posts today.)

My Goals for Today:

Start the Combining and Filtering Data with T-SQL course on Pluralsight (my work provides me with a Pluralsight account for continuous learning)
Revisit Colt Steele's Web Developer Bootcamp course and work through a few more lessons

What I Completed

I started the SQL course but didn't get very far into it because my computer blue screened and I called it a day

What I Learned

This day was kind of a bust, but I did learn how to create my own databases locally, and how to restore a database from a backup. Small progress is still progress. I'm excited to dive deeper.

Goals for Next Time

I want to get back to my Survey Form project for the freecodecamp Front End Web Development certification, but that's going to have to be a project for the weekend
Finish the current SQL course I'm working through
Finish the section of the Colt Steele course

100 Days of Learning - Day 5

Lauren Fosgett — Thu, 06 Jan 2022 20:46:22 +0000

Hello and welcome to my 100 Days of Learning challenge! As I mentioned yesterday, I'm starting to dig deeper into SQL for work. I found a course on Pluralsight that has been so helpful and really changed how I think about my SQL queries (link below).

My Learning Goals for today:

complete the Pluralsight course on SQL Queries

What I Completed:

I finished the course!

What I Learned:

Finishing out this course covered FROM, WHERE, GROUP BY, and HAVING clauses, and so much more. The examples in this course are so thorough and explain why different errors might occur in your queries (and really drill in execution order). I plan to revisit these and start to put together a series on SQL based on what I've learned.

I also signed up for CodeNewbie's 2022 Learn In Public Challenge, so maybe this SQL series will be my focus for that. It's about a month away, so we'll see if I've moved onto learning something different by then.

My Goals for Next Time:

Start the Pluralsight course on SQL Joins
- When I finish these Pluralsight courses, I'm going to do a case study of the queries I've been using at work in my day-to-day, and then ask my developer to give me a deep dive on how the DB for one of our main projects is structured.

Thanks for joining me on this journey. If you're doing your own #100daysofcode, please share in the comments! I'd love to hear about what you're learning.

100 Days Of Learning - Day 4

Lauren Fosgett — Thu, 06 Jan 2022 03:46:18 +0000

Hello everyone, I'm back for Day 4. I'm happy to report I figured out how to add my posts to a series here on DEV (pro tip: you can still add jekyll front matter even if you are using the rich text editor themoreyouknow.jpg).

Today I tackled something different, I've been asked to level up my SQL skills at work (I'm a business analyst, and while I don't get into the DBs on our projects often, it occasionally comes up).

Fortunately, my company provides me with a Pluralsight account, so I'm working my way through a course (link below) to get a better understanding beyond my current level of "basic queries that I copy-pasted from my devs and then made simple modifications to in order to get to the data I'm looking for". The goal is to be able to start from scratch and draft my own queries. Later I want to get a deeper understanding of how the DBs are structured in some of my main projects.

My Learning Goals for today:

Install SQL Server 19 on my machine
Work through 1 hour of the 2 hour course Querying Data with T-SQL from SQL Server

What I Completed:

Installed SQL Server 19 and completed about 50 minutes of video material

What I Learned:

Where to begin! I really wish I had found this course sooner. I have read online tutorials and taken an Udemy course on MySQL before, and I had the general concepts around SQL queries down, but I didn't have any true understanding of what was happening.

This course covered how to navigate SSMS, the statement execution order, and a very basic overview of joins. What was especially helpful for understanding joins is 1) how the execution order impacts what is returned and 2) actually going into set theory. Maybe I'll make another post diving deeper into what made this click for me.

My Goals for Next Time:

Finish this course
Get back to my Survey Form project from yesterday (this might turn into a weekend project instead, we'll see)

Thanks for joining me on this journey. If you're doing your own #100daysofcode or if there are any other SQL resources you recommend, please share below! I'd love to hear about what you're learning.

Photo by Jan Antonin Kolar on Unsplash

100 Days of Learning - Days 2 and 3

Lauren Fosgett — Wed, 05 Jan 2022 04:08:57 +0000

Hello everyone, welcome to my #100DaysOfLearning challenge. I started this post on 12/30/21 with Day 2 and forgot to wrap up and post it, so here's Days 2 and 3 together.

My learning goals today are:

For Day 2,
- Complete section 25 "Introducing the World of the DOM" in Colt Steele's Web Developer Bootcamp course
- Review FCC frontend projects and start one
For Day 3,
- Keep making progress on section 25 (somehow my progress wasn't saved from my last session, so I'm reviewing lessons I already watched)
- Complete the HTML for the Survey Form project

What I completed:

For Day 2,
- I made progress on section 25 of the Udemy course
- I started the Survey Form project HTML- link to CodePen
For Day 3,
- I made progress on the Survey Form project HTML
- I made progress on section 25. I remember watching more of the lessons than were marked off in Udemy, but it doesn't hurt to review the material again. -UPDATE: I was accidentally watching a different course by the same author that covers similar material LOL. Still it was a good review :)

What I learned:

Introduction to click events and addEventListener()
getAttribute() and setAttribute()
Re-familiarized myself with HTML forms

My goals for next time:

Figure out how to turn these posts into a series here on DEV (is that something I can only do with the jekyll front matter? I'm using the rich text editor...)
Settle on a convention so these posts are more consistent
Wrap up the Survey Form project html + css
Work through section 25 and complete the section code-along

Photo by Mohammad Rahmani on Unsplash

100 Days Of Learning - Day 1

Lauren Fosgett — Thu, 30 Dec 2021 21:23:45 +0000

Hello everyone, welcome to my #100DaysOfLearning challenge.

My learning goals today are:

Complete section 24 "Introducing the World of the DOM" in Colt Steele's Web Developer Bootcamp course
Review FCC frontend projects and start one

What I completed:

Section 24 from the Colt Steele course, with all exercises saved in Codepen here
Started Section 25 in the same course - DOM events! (I'm very excited to start this)

What I learned:

Today I reviewed DOM methods including:

element.getAttribute()
element.setAttribute(attr, value)
document.createElement(element)
element.append()
Node.appendChild()

My goals for next time:

I want to try to be more descriptive in what I'm learning, and also try to practice more on my own beyond the exercises in the course. I'm enjoying copying the exercises into Codepen and trying them there, and I've been including some of my notes as comments on the exercises, but it would be worth exploring those ideas further.

Next time I plan to continue the section on Events and actually look over the FreeCodeCamp frontend projects.

Photo by J. Kelly Brito on Unsplash

100 Days Of Learning #2022

Lauren Fosgett — Thu, 30 Dec 2021 18:04:44 +0000

Hi there, I'm Lauren. I'm a Business Analyst working in tech and my goal for 2022 is to expand my technical skills. I'm interested in learning a lot of different things this year, from leveling up my frontend dev skills, to learning test automation, to editing videos, and more. Really I want to start doing and creating more things, rather than spending all my time scrolling social media or getting stuck in tutorial hell.

Enter my #100DaysOfLearning challenge! I plan to document my experience over the next few months here on Dev.

The goal of this challenge isn't to do something every single day for 100 days. Instead, I want the spirit of this challenge to be learning and practicing new things at least 5/7 days a week, and documenting my progress. I've tried #100daysof____ challenges in the past, and not being flexible with myself ultimately resulted in me giving up on the challenge. (Another thing I'm trying out this year is #flexible goals - more on that in another post).

So here's to learning in 2022! If you're doing your own challenge, I'd love to hear about it in the comments below :-)

Photo by Avel Chuklanov on Unsplash

Just Start

Lauren Fosgett — Tue, 05 Nov 2019 04:26:56 +0000

I have been interested in web development and coding for a while now. Every time in my life that I've felt lost or uncertain about my future, I find my way back into coding and building upon my dev skills.

And then life happens, and I fall out of the habit, and I forget how much I enjoy learning and building new things.

Getting back into the habit can be really discouraging, especially if it's been months since I've last touched a line of code. I found myself trying to revisit old projects, but beating myself up about how much better the final product could have been if I had just stuck with it.

I've tried to build my personal website many, many times. I start working on it, envisioning a beautiful final product, and I quickly get discouraged because at this point, my skill level doesn't meet the bar I've set for myself.

It wasn't until recently that I realized it doesn't need to be perfect, I just need to do it.

I'm reminded of this excellent quote from Ira Glass:

“It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”

I never connected with "fighting my way through" because I never gave myself the chance. Once I lowered my self-imposed expectations, I was able to build a site, work through the challenges I was facing and get something working. It may not be pretty (yet!) but I'm beyond proud of it.

My advice to you if you're in a similar situation: keep it simple, keep moving forward, your skills will get better over time.

I originally posted this on my blog at LaurenFosgett.com.