Roadmap Completed - Mission Accomplished
Date: October 9th, 2022
Math Whiz?
After months of going back to relearn math and bring it up to a college level thanks to the incredible Khan Academy, I'm happy to say I completed and passed my Calculus course, and met one of the prerequisites for the Bachelor of Computer Science degree. Starting with basic arithmetic to get my brain in a learning mode for math, I took the train took it all the way up through Geometry, Algebra and of course, Calculus.
I recently enrolled at Western Governors University and will begin classes soon. I am beyond excited to have achieved a new learning opportunity, and I am hopeful this will help round out my programming knowledge, introduce new languages and tools, and bring new opportunities in my career in software development.
Dabbling in Python
In my Intro to Programming course, I was able to be reintroduced to using Python. I learned some basic syntax 4 or 5 years ago, when I was still debating between which language to begin with as a beginner. This time I was had no choice but to get in the trenches, and build some programs in Python for the first time.
My first small project was a command line quiz game for vocabulary, which provides randomized multiple choice questions, and keeps a score. This program also includes the capability to add, update or delete the vocabulary list, which is saved to a json file. I'll have this project up on my Github very soon. What I'm most excited about with this project is I had plans to build something similar into my Teachery web app in the future. Now that I have the algorithms thought out, and a basic design that works bug-free, I may implement this as a feature in the very near future.
Portfolio Update
Now that I have met some of my personal educational goals, I can deep dive back into development. First things first, I have a new UI redesign of my portfolio that has already gone live. I'll have a new blog post soon with detailed information of any changes. The portfolio will use the latest version of Gatsby, and has some bug fixes and code cleanup, but the visual refresh makes it feel shiny new again.
What the Future Holds
In the near future I will begin classes at the university. From now until then, it is a good time for me to start learning the basics of Java, and getting an environment setup for the many courses I will need Java for. I also want to spend more time on learning data structures and algorithms, and truly start to practice and exercise my brain on challenge problems.
For personal projects, I am quite undecided where to go from here. I don't want to build anything too elaborate when I'll already have plenty to do with studies. My current plan is to update existing apps, and feel out what I really want to do next. I may rebuild the type: embedded-entry-inline id: 5BN2IEUeq2YoNSiRIsgKEo backend in Typescript. I want to flesh out another NextJS project since it is my favorite way to design apps by far, however I would also like to dabble in Vue, or build something with Python. Ahh, so many ideas, so little time to do it all!
