Day 035: Passively Consuming More Online Courses

Not much to report due to work obligations taking up a chunk of time (average so far have been 13 hour work days for the past week and half, 6 more days to go, /sigh) so much of my learning time have been passively watching the Lynda courses before bed.

It's not what I prefer because it is not active learning, but it is the best I can do at this time. I try to do what I can during down time at work, but the nature of my work is full of interruptions so at best, I can just review notes here and there.

For my to-do list from the last post, I did manage to finish off 2 courses on Lynda.com and I am working my way through the KA course (which has a split of videos and exercises, so I have been going through them a bit slower), and I added a few more bits and bobs to the list.

Note: all the Lynda.com links require a paid account (I get free access from my work). However, I have heard that some public libraries allow access to Lynda if you are a member, so check your local library to see if they offer the access!

• Lynda.com JS for Web Designers w/ Joe Chellman: has a great quick intro to the DOM as well as using the Google Maps API in one of the exercises. It's a relatively short course, but pretty good for the continued exposure and the intro to DOM if you haven't been introduced to it yet. 
• Lynda.com Learning the JS Language w/ Joe Chellman: this is more of a refresher for me. I am finding the nested loops to be the most challenging for me right now and I enjoy seeing how different instructors go about explaining the concepts in different ways to really drill it in my head. 
• Khan Academy Intro to JS: Drawing & Animation: this is just a fun JS tutorial refresher. It's aimed at teaching kids so there is a lot of whimsy to it (and much appreciated when my brain is fried after a long day at work). This particular course uses the Processing.js library to teach the concepts of JS with drawings and animations so it was a fresh take on the basics and is admittedly my real first use of a specific JS library. I am almost done with this course. 

Here are the addons: 

• Lynda.com Coding for Visual Learners: Learning JavaScript from Scratch w/ Engin Arslan: After finishing the other 2 Lynda courses, I started on this one. However, I feel like it covers much of the same content as the KA Drawing & Animation course (although he uses P5.js instead of Processing.JS), so I am putting this on hold for now and maybe revisit on 2x speed as a refresher in the future. 
• Lynda.com Learning ECMAScript 6 w/ Eve Porcello: I just started this one. I haven't gotten too far, so not much to comment on right now. Since I am moving on to the ES6 section on FCC, I figure this is good to watch to get more familiarity with Modern JS.
• Lynda.com JavaScript: Functions w/ Ray Villalobos: Haven't started this one yet, but it is short enough to go on the list and would be a good refresher, I think. 
• Lynda.com JavaScript: Events w/ Ray Villalobos: Haven't started this either. It is also another short course and I won't mind getting a closer look at events. I also heard Ray Villalobos is an excellent instructor so I am eager to check out his courses. 

I think all of the above will keep me occupied until I am done with having to work like a Japanese salaryman. Once crunch time at work is over with, I slowly start going through a recently purchased Udemy course, the Complete Web Development Bootcamp w/ Angela Yu. There was the Mother's Day sale going on at Udemy for $11.99 so it was hard to pass up such a highly rated and widely recommend course.

Have to support other Asian women, yanno!

Whilst I am still a bit shaky on some of the JS fundamentals, I am getting impatient to start moving on with the material and I shouldn't just languish in the JS basics forever. It is only convenient to do so now because of the work situation.

But once work is not an issue anymore, the goal is to follow along with Angela's course. It has 42 hours of course time and basically covers everything in the FCC curriculum.

If I have unlimited free access to the Lynda courses, why did I decided to shell out the cash for a Udemy course? While the Lynda courses are great, they're a bit all over the place and lack the consistency of having a single instructor and a focused curriculum. True, they have something called "Learning Paths" but I found I do have an adjustment period to each new instructor and they vary in the projects and challenges each course offers. I also want something that more closely follows the path in FCC so I decided to go with Angela's bootcamp. Honestly, I spend more than the cost of a Udemy course on lunch at work so that bit of money on buying a structured program is worth it to me.

I've just gotten through the intro section and I have found her to be a very pleasant and engaging instructor so far. I'll probably 2x speed through the HTML/CSS sections only watching those parts and then slow down and start coding when the Bootstrap sections start.

I do intend to go through her course at least 2x and may consider other well known and highly regarded Udemy bootcamp courses if I feel like I need more exposure to the basic web dev stacks, but I am hoping her course will be enough. I still haven't gone through a second iteration of Practical JS yet and I still want to soonish. I think it will be interesting to see how much better I will be able to follow along with him now that I understand JS a bit better.

I thought I was more of a read-along/screenshots type of learner. But since I was kind of forced into the video habit due to work, but I am finding a great deal of enjoyment out of them. And yes, I do believe the repeated exposure has really helped me understand the concepts even though I have not been able to psychically code much.