I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I’M DOING

Or: I wish coding were like reading a knitting pattern

Three weeks ago I started the Front End Web Development course with Thinkful. I’m still in the early stages of learning and, as exhilarating as it can be learning a new skill, as a mother far into her career it can also be overwhelmingly frustrating. This weekend I spent my entire Saturday ignoring my family while I pounded away at my Thinkful assignment. What I built was nice… for a first try; it’s just not exactly what I’d planned in my wireframe, and I needed help; I was feeling defeated.

My wireframe and the site I built so far. Note the significant lack of the 3 pics above the footer? A source of pain yesterday

You see, I’m coming into this with very little experience. I learned HTML to built a website (and I’m showing my age here) in 1997 for an assignment on the “psychology of design” [pause here to think about how that 90's site must have looked]. Since then, I used minimal HTML on my blogspot site and in flickr from around 2000–2006. Basically, I knew how to link, make something bold and insert an image. HTML has changed a lot since then, and so have I!

In February, I moved to a more technical position at the non-profit organization I work for; since then, we've developed a WordPress microsite for our I&R department; it’s now all mine, and I love it. I started up a campaign management system, and built the online registration (using eventbrite) for our free workshops and support groups. I also built pages to show a visitor the full scope of my non-profit’s services by region and by type; while it’s an improvement on what we had, it’s not perfect and it’s time to branch out to make our online information more ours; more interactive; more *now*. My company is about to embark on a new journey, new site, and a new CMS with a Drupal shop, and I want to play a large role in it. To do so, I need to know more than my basic HTML, which is why I chose Thinkful to help me develop my FEWD skills. I know this is a new skill that will take time and won’t be easy, but still! I was frustrated that it wasn't working the way I wanted it to, so I ended up in Slack posting to my fellow students and mentors:

Step 6 should have read “go to step 3" at the end.

So where does the knitting coming in?

I wrote the six stages because I needed to know the challenges weren't just me; to make sure I shouldn't just quit because I don’t have the brain for it. I got the support and reinforcement I needed, with extra encouragement after Thinkful blogged what I wrote. Their blog post made me re-read what I had written in Slack, and I remembered something; I felt this way about learning to knit too! It was Hard; vexing; “impossible” even, but I’d walk away, do something completely different and, when I came back to it with fresh eyes (and a new level of patience), I would often find I could get a little further. Sometimes I would be truly stuck and would have to ask for help from someone with more experience than me; It’s how I had a knit blog: to connect to others doing this crazy thing called knitting.

Some of my projects that can be found on Ravelry

Granted, coding isn’t knitting, though there has been plenty of discussion about how the 2 relate; but, the truth is, since those days of annoyance, I've knit a lot. My knitting skills are admired; I’m pretty good. I've written patterns, can knit in the dark watching a movie, and I find it one of the most relaxing and satisfying things I can do. Maybe one day, I’ll have similar feelings about building a website.

This is my first blog post since April 2006 — which was about knitting, of course. You can follow me on twitter to find out when I’ll post erratically about my experiences learning code @cabechler. If you’d like to share your experiences as a new coder, I’d love to hear how you’re doing it and how it’s working out for you.