In this essay I will get more into depth about my experience with the 5 WOD activities more specifically how I prep for them. These 5 WODs this month were a lot more challenging compared to the first 3 but after each one I finish with a little more knowledge than I had before. For each WOD I will discuss both my positive and negative experiences, what I did to prepare, and my main takeaways after completing each one. Though these WODs in my opinion were super challenging, it felt very rewarding completing each and every one knowing all the time and effort it took to complete these assignments. You can find the prompts to this assignment here!
For Browser History 6 we were tasked to take our Browser History project we were working on and create 4 different web pages. Honestly, I was excited to start this WOD because I had fun creating Browser History 1,2 and 3. I also felt a little comfortable tackling this project on because in ICS 101 we had a similar project where we had a main website that led to different web pages with buttons. Starting the WOD, I had somewhat of an understanding of how to create the separate web pages and adding buttons. I knew right away to change the navigation bar title values to buttons. Once I did the first button correctly, I was able to just copy and paste the rest of the buttons and just changing the title of the buttons. I also understood that I had to create 4 new html files because we needed to create the web pages the button was leading to. I had no problem with this step. Putting all the information to the pages that it belonged to was also not too difficult for me. I simply copy and pasted the relevant information to each browser and deleted it from the main HTML page since it is not the introduction home page. What I did struggle with was adding in the logos to be displayed when the mouse moved over the buttons. Whenever I got to this step I would mess up. I had to watch the screencast for this step and at first, I thought I understood what I needed to do however during my attempt 2 I was having the same problem which was my logos weren’t showing up. After doing it repeatedly, on my 5th try I realized my image source tags weren’t properly typed out. I also learned that I needed to add “href” to some of my tags because it designated the destination of the hyperlink. This was my major problem, but I am glad I was able to catch it. Like Port always says, it’s the smallest things like this that are going to mess you up. This last part of the WOD, adding the logos on mouse over was my biggest struggle with completing this assignment. I could have next time read the direction and looked at my notes at the same time to see specific ways I could potentially go about this. My notes have lots of information from screencasts, the readings, and even some notes Port says during class. I need to utilize them more when completing my WODs.
In the Smartphone products with variables WOD, I got to have more hands on experiences working with JavaScript. In this WOD, I got to use the quick search command for the first time in VS code to find certain keywords within my code. To prepare for myself for this WOD I made sure I read all the assigned readings so I would be up to date with the concepts we are using in class. Before I started anything I read the directions multiple times. Some of them I knew right away how to do, others I didn’t know where to start. But I read the directions 4 times which helped me fully understand what needed to be completed in terms of this WOD assignment. It definitely helped me that I was familiar with the directions, I felt more comfortable tackling this on. For the next WOD, to feel even more prepared I am going to look over the notes I take on our assigned readings before starting the WODs. A lot of what we do in our WODs can be found in our assigned reading so looking over my notes on them can be extremely useful. Copying and pasting the code from the directions into my html was the easiest part for me. I knew exactly where to put them and I knew which tags needed to be where. What threw me off was replacing my tags with the given strings from the directions. I had to manually go through all of them and because of this I ran into error. Changing a whole bunch at once is prone to something going. This happened to me for the first time. So would I did was I read the directions again (kind of repetitive but it’s helpful) and watched the screencast. I did not know you can search for key letters or tags within your code and replace them with something within seconds. I had to figure out how to pull up that search bar on VS code with a Mac doing my own research but once I figured it out and practiced a couple time with my first attempt I felt ready to try it again.
With Invoice 1, I have learned with my other WODs I had to really sit down and read the directions. I read the directions for this assignment three times. One to get an understanding of what I was trying to do. A second time for clarification and a third time to make sure I understood what needed to be done and what was going to be graded. Compared to the WOD before I had read my notes before starting this WOD (on variables) which I have not done in the past. For this WOD we were task to create an invoice with different products and at the bottom of the involve we needed to include the tax, subtotal, and total for everything. Going into this assignment certain steps were easier for me than others. Assigning the variables, including all necessary information for all the problems, computing prices and taxes I had no problem with. If I did it was a super small issue that I was easily able to spot and fix. A lot of these steps were repetitive because there were so many products, we were adding onto this invoice but the same information for these products. Usually what we did for one product we did for the others with a few minor changes. The issue that I had was creating the table itself which was strange because I thought this was the easiest step when I first read the directions. The reason I had trouble with this step because it was very tedious work and lot of room for error. I found I was placing the wrong information in the wrong spots for the products. I also found errors in my variables as I was going through this step. I had issues of having more than 1 item with the same name, adding the wrong variables in, and forgetting to change the variable number into the rows so the information would repeat. I think this step was the hardest for me because of all the errors that I had made prior to starting the table. Next time I would honestly tell myself simply to breath before each WOD. For some reason I get anxious doing each WOD which in the end affects my performance. I need to remain calm and simply do what I need to do.
The directions for Invoice 2 compared to 1 was significantly shorter. In this WOD, we were tasked to calculate shipping and the new totals for the invoice. It seemed self-explanatory to me. To prepare for this WOD I reviewed Invoice 1 and the directions for Invoice 1. This was the first time I reviewed another WOD before starting the next. I did this because I wanted to refresh my mind on what Invoice 1 consisted of. After reading the directions and reviewing invoice 1 I felt confident with what I needed to do. I had the most difficult time computing tax based on shipping. I got confused of when to use if else statements and ended up having errors multiple times. This caused me to run out of time multiple times simply on this step. I had to watch the screencast and really try to understand how and why the tax was calculated that way. After this I was able to complete this step successfully. That was my biggest challenge, but I also ran into the smallest mistakes here and there, though were so small, it was the reason why my code did not run. Misspelled words and not closing my tags properly were common but I was able to find my mistakes quickly. I could have reviewed my notes on the recent screencast before starting this WOD. I think it would’ve allowed me to understand the else statements much more before starting. For the next WOD I need to do breathing exercises because I found myself getting really overwhelmed and stress completing this assignment.
Smartphone Products 2 made us use loops to teach us how we can avoid redundant code. To prepare for this WOD I read the directions, went over my loop notes, and did some breathing exercises. To be honest I did not know how to go about this, besides from defining the variables so I had to watch the screencast. Step 5, the very last step was the most difficult for me. Here we had to use a for loop in place of the variable initialization loop. This was because I did not define how many phones slots, I wanted to see on the web server. Because of this whenever I ran anything, all I saw was the title. It took me a while to figure out my num_items had to defined to 5. I understood what I needed to do for each string after this but my for loop was writing to a variable that did not exist nothing ran. This happened because of notes I took during the screencast. This was the first time I did this and it’s going to be my last to hopefully avoid situations like this in the future. I only had 2 bullets of notes but since there were not really any context clues, I just followed what was on my notes and it obviously did not help me. In the next WOD, to prepare I am only going to read my notes and directions while performing the WOD.
After completing a WOD, it feels very rewarding because you are doing it over and over again till you get it right. I don’t go into a WOD assignment thinking I’d be able to finish it in 1 attempt but yes that is still the goal. I have never been able to complete a WOD in 1 attempt, but I think that’s a good thing. I am learning from my mistakes as I go through each one and I am excited to do more in the future. These essays really do help me reflect on my strengths and weaknesses when it comes to completing these assignments. In my opinion you really only learn with experience and these WODs are giving us the experience to apply what we are learning in the presentation slides and readings to an actual project.