Suncoast Developers Guild: Week 1
Whew! It’s been a whirlwind of a week.
After months of preparing, I finally started the full-stack web development program at Suncoast Developers Guild in St. Pete, Florida. I felt a little nervous on my first day, but overall I was chomping at the bit to get started. I am in Cohort XII with seven other people, all from completely different backgrounds. Our first day was a lot of introduction. Meeting each other, setting up our laptops with the right software, and going over the goals and requirements of the program.
Once that was done, though, it was time to start learning!
Of course, on Day One we tackled the basics of HTML, and our assignment for the day was to publish our first webpage. I wrote a short story about how I got into Brazilian jiu jitsu, added some images, and a little bit of CSS. Check out the link below to see my inaugural page!
The next day we learned how to style the page with CSS. I made a few more pages and threw some links into a navbar, and I had a basic website!
For the rest of the week, we focused on the ins and outs of CSS. Flexbox turned out to be really helpful laying out the page. No more dealing with crazy floats, thank goodness! Our lessons on CSS culminated in reproducing a portion of the Octodex, the website that holds all of the different iterations of the Octocat, Github’s mascot. I was able to add a few elements of responsive design to the site.
Fridays at SDG are a little different. Instead of a coding lecture and then lab time, the day is dedicated to career support. I made a LinkedIn profile for the first time and learned about personal branding. At the end of the day on Friday, we have Suncoast Socials which are a chance to unwind with my peers after a week of intense learning. The campus is located on Grand Central in St. Pete, so there’s a lot to do within walking distance. This week we went to the arcade bar Right Around the Corner (which is genuinely right around the corner from us). Guess who’s still a beast at Mario Kart 64?
The week wasn’t quite over, yet, though. On Saturday five people from Cohort XII decided to come to campus just to do some work together on our Octodexes. It’s nice knowing that I always have access to a workspace for coding.
Looking forward to learning Javascript next week!
