Week 5 has come and passed, and I have to admit as you will tell by the timestamp - this post is late! This is because of several reasons, but ultimately i can fully place the blame on the door of Javascript.

Bloody hell week 5 was the most intense so far. Not only did we jump headfirst into the world of brackets and semi colons, we had to immediately translate several programs we had previously built in Ruby, into Javascript. The first morning i spent looking up all of these strange words that were synonymous with Javascript…prototypes, functions, asynchronous programming. I was completely overwhelmed.

However after a few days battling through conventions, functions and incorrect bracket placements, it somehow started to click. This is something makers had always said loud and proud, and something i was not quite sure how it would happen - “we teach you to code, not a specific language”. And to my shock, it happened. After a few days, conventions and processes I had learnt in the previous 4 weeks did in fact translate into a foundation of coding knowledge!

The challenge of the week was to build a thermostat, that responded to a variety of functions. This was then tied to a front end userface which controlled the logic of the thermostat via the magic of jQuery.

This was my first experience of front end development, and how pleasing it was! It was amazing to see instant changes visually, and not just the output on the terminal being what you want - the creative juices started flowing, and with some basic query knowledge, colours changes, buttons made sounds and the end product was more than what i would ever have imagined after a week of Javascript.

It looks like this process is clicking, and the structure grows on itself each week, dare i say it is starting to make sense now!

Next week is our first group project week which i’m sure will brings its own new challenges, i’m looking forward to seeing what can be achieved when 4 of us crack heads and code!

As always, wish me luck!

David