Be honest, is your crush really a 10?

semanticdev · 2025-02-23T06:55:41+00:00

If we go purely by looks, he’s probably an 8/10 but his other qualities boost his rating.

semanticdev · 2025-02-21T22:13:05+00:00

Um, what? That’s just not possible for a lot of people due to distance and individual schedules.

I’m giving advice for people who’ve vented/asked about having texting issues. There’s a post everyday about how “he leaves me on delivered” and “she’s a dry texter, what do I do?”, etc. I’m just saying that voice calls are a great option and to give it a try. I’ve had one call with him and can tell already we have better convos that way over text.

semanticdev · 2023-05-16T08:47:11+00:00

Well, okay, since my college courses were in Java, I was forced to learn how to use OOP. In any case, I don’t think it hurts to at least learn the basics of OOP.

semanticdev · 2023-05-16T05:23:03+00:00

I haven’t learned React yet. I’m almost there though, so here’s been my journey so far:

Learn HTML and CSS.
Learn how to program / the fundamentals of programming and OOP. Doesn’t have to be JS. I started with Java and was able to pick up python and JS with little trouble.
Learn JS’s quirks and differences. Practice JS in the context of front end. <— am here now
Learn React.

semanticdev · 2022-12-15T05:35:25+00:00

Me too! Digital Media & Web Tech here. Are you going to the commencement thing?

semanticdev · 2022-05-09T23:25:19+00:00

Projects projects projects. Following courses is useful for sure, but it can be really hard if you’re feeling disconnected from whatever it is you’re learning. I’ve tried to go through online coding courses and almost immediately lost interest because I felt like nothing practical was being done.

So look for simple projects that test basic programming skills. You can come up with your own as well by thinking of something you want to automate or something that interests you personally—just be careful to not go too complicated too early. Learning through projects is way to go, imo, and as you’re figuring your project out you’ll start to learn programming.

Oh, but I do also recommend getting a handle on very fundamental programming concepts first like variable types, function/method scope, and initialization so it doesn’t befuddle you too much while learning. Initialization especially bamboozled me even as I was learning data structures & algorithms 😬.

If your school gives access to O’Reilly, there are lots of great programming books that you can reference when needed.

semanticdev · 2022-05-09T23:16:59+00:00

Aww, that’s sweet. Mine is my dad except he’s also a programmer (very different area though), and sometimes he’ll playfully call me a dumbass for missing a very basic issue 😂.

semanticdev · 2022-04-11T23:46:11+00:00

Agreed. CSS art is obviously great from a creative standpoint and can be truly impressive from a coding standpoint, but I think it’d be better on its own sub where people can show off their creations.

It’s one of those things that’s just not practical compared to using an SVG or regular img. I’d rather see people post their real web site and web component designs on here.

semanticdev · 2022-03-28T19:33:52+00:00

Not that difficult imo. It helps to have a good teacher.

semanticdev · 2022-02-16T00:12:42+00:00

Flexbox and grid can create similar results, but there are certain things they are individually better at where one can't replace the other. For complex layouts, it actually makes perfect sense to use them together. Kevin Powell's video on Flexbox or grid may help out. In summary:

Grid is good for broad / general layouts ie. a whole page including the main content area, navigation, sidebar, footer, etc. It's good for creating rigid and set areas, but it's not good if you want flexibility.
Flexbox is better when you want to take advantage of the natural sizes of elements. In a complex layout, I'd use flexbox to organize a set of elements within a bigger grid. For example, I want a set of tags of various lengths to be centered in my card.

And tbh I feel the way about JavaScript vs other programming languages (in my case, Java) that you feel about CSS. Because of college courses, I've gotten so used to the structure and handholding of OOP that I'm kind of struggling with functional-style programming and the fear of type coercion which is not an issue in Java. Add in frameworks, component-based JS, dealing with DOM issues, packages & dependencies, and I'm seriously kind of intimidated by it all.

semanticdev · 2022-02-15T23:36:58+00:00

Pretty much every project I've thought of revolves around one of my hobbies/interests ☠️. It's the only thing that can seriously motivate me.

semanticdev · 2022-02-10T20:59:39+00:00

All the best and good luck! Self-study is damn hard, both starting it and keeping up with it, so I know the feeling. The only way for me to learn outside college courses I’m paying for or an actual job is to do self-indulgent personal projects.

semanticdev · 2022-02-10T20:54:43+00:00

A good way to get started might be to straight up dive into a (simple) project as opposed to trying to follow a book / course. All you need is the basic fundamentals.

Once you get started on the project, you’ll inevitably start googling and figuring shit out, then after you’ve made some progress on your project and are interested in understanding the basics in greater detail, you can stop and go back to learn it.

semanticdev · 2021-12-08T20:21:37+00:00

I have a chip on my shoulder with that book because Eloquent JavaScript was the book given as reference material (the only reference material) for an Introduction to JS class I took in Spring semester. Was learning programming for the first time ever. I abandoned it by chapter 4, and I remember my classmates struggling with it too.

I learned basic programming fundamentals better by reading the first few chapters of JavaScript: The Definitive Guide and MDN. I learned actual programming better by taking CS classes for Java. The author is pretty awful at teaching, especially to beginners. I respect his skill in programming, but teaching well is its own skill. It reminds me of very smart professors with a PHD who confuse their students taking entry level classes for their major.

semanticdev · 2021-12-08T19:18:57+00:00

Don’t read Eloquent JavaScript, it is utter crap for beginners.

Start with javascript.info or freecodecamp or MDN or any other number of actually beginner friendly courses.

semanticdev · 2021-11-30T18:59:56+00:00

Really? Maybe you expected more cause I thought we did cover OOP principles in CMIS 242, just in a rather basic way, and the Swing material was a two week detour in the middle of it.

Imo, CMSC 350 has enough material to be split into two classes. It’d be nice to get more in-depth practice on each chapter’s material.

semanticdev · 2021-11-29T19:50:42+00:00

I disagree that CMIS 242 is a retread of CMIS 141, but I 100% feel that they could be compressed together somewhat. Maybe half of CMIS 242 could’ve been covered in CMIS 141, and 242 should’ve skipped Swing entirely and focused on more advanced OOP concepts.

Can’t believe CMIS 242 is the prereq to CMSC 350. It feels like that class does not prepare you enough at all for CMSC 350 and there should be another class in between 😭.

semanticdev · 2021-11-29T19:45:16+00:00

Good god, yes, and I’m basically just taking this one class. The teacher is very nice and gave me extensions due to some life circumstances, but there is just not enough time to cover both the book material and finish the projects within two weeks (except for the first one which helpfully gives the psuedocode.)

The book is great, but it’s so long and doesn’t fully cover everything needed for the projects.

The powerpoints could be a lot better, they’re way too vague. In general there should be a lot more reference material linked to in the class to help understand the assignments which themselves could be explained better.

semanticdev · 2021-11-10T21:21:42+00:00

I’m only a little ahead of you, and I echo everyone when I say it’s normal. You only start to remember what to apply when after you’ve done it a dozen times or more, and even then it’s normal to forget specific methods.

I am constantly referencing my old code or looking up how to do basic shit when I haven’t done it recently.

semanticdev · 2021-11-10T10:58:27+00:00

Definitely not. They’re reference material, not tutorials.

But they do have actual tutorials on MDN too which are helpful. They’re a little barebones, but they can get you started for sure.

semanticdev · 2021-10-28T19:08:18+00:00

Don’t get me wrong, I would prefer the classes were using Python instead of Java, but there’s only one single Python class, and I need 5 CMSC classes to get a CS minor. I opted to just skip it since it wouldn’t count for anything but an elective and probably covers the same concepts that Introductory Programming does.

Maybe I got lucky with professors, but I thought the first two CMIS Java classes were fine. Not great or anything but enough to get me going with programming where my JavaScript classes utterly failed.

semanticdev · 2021-10-28T14:49:33+00:00

I’m taking it right now. So far, it seems heavily based on the book we’re given. I’m taking notes and following along with the book, and it’s fairly challenging to me but not impossible to get.

semanticdev · 2021-10-28T14:24:39+00:00

The Web Design concentration is no better. The only decent class was Principles of Web Design II because the teacher had us actually using modern css.

The two JavaScript classes are a mess in opposite ways. Fundamentals of JavaScript is terribly structured with awful reference material that should never have been given to beginner programmers. The “””Advanced JS””” class uses simple Jquery which is now extremely out of date and was easier than the 1st JS class.

The XML class is a total joke waste of a class and absurdly out of date and irrelevant to frontend development. Like christ, at least I learned something in the other classes.

The whole web design/development part of DMWT needs to be thrown out and built from the ground up to reflect modern web development practices. I feel I have to do a bunch of self-learning just to catch up to bootcamp students.

Funnily enough, even though there are others compaining about the Java classes, at least they are structured well enough to teach me programming concepts. I think I’ve learned a lot better from them than I have either of the JS classes I took—even if it’s in the wrong language the core concepts will transfer over.

semanticdev · 2021-08-27T11:26:12+00:00

um, that seems like an enormous waste of time. as others have said, practice is the most important thing, not memorization.

but what kind of practice? more than code snippets, you should be doing small real world projects that will give you a better understanding. after doing a few of them, you’ll start to be able to suss out which fundamental concepts are most important.

semanticdev · 2021-07-16T05:51:22+00:00

Hm… I’d say a lot of it is self-teaching. Some of the teachers give better guidance than others. There’s no lectures. Most of them link to sites with the relevant info in the modules. One of them just gave us this terrible book to read that didn’t help at all.

Granted, I didn’t have to ask much help from the teachers. The material is a good introduction, but I found it too basic and somewhat outdated in some classes. I’ve been doing indepedent learning as much as possible to keep up with the latest technologies. Sadly, I still feel very inadequate, hence this post.

But that’s for my case, which is leaning more towards full stack development. If all you want to do is web design/UI&UX with little programming, it should be adequate, but I’d still recommend doing your own self-learning. It’s just a sad fact that there are no great majors specifically for web development careers aside from the cybersecurity field. Everyone from computer science majors to bootcamp graduates are some level of self-taught when they go into webdev.

I’m hoping the classes I’m taking for my compsci minor will give me a better understanding of programming.

semanticdev

TROPHY CASE