I start this Ironhack experience having no expectations. I was surprised to find out that (1) this is the first run for Ironhack in English and (2) this is also the first time they have it in Barcelona. I love it here, I have been to Barcelona before but only for a few days and all I did was touristy things. Now, it feels different because I know I came here for a purpose — and that is to learn web development.

Week 1: HTML, CSS, Github and Javascript

For the first few days, we dived into HTML and CSS. This, I can handle because I was able to practice a lot before on the pre-work advanced layout exercise. I did learn a couple of new things, and it makes me very interested to get a job in front-end web development. I’ve always loved design and I know I can make websites based on HTML and CSS, so I hope, maybe, I can do this professionally.

Third day, we experienced Git. I knew Github only from the pre-work, and for us newbies it was quite a bit stressful setting it up and getting familiar with the commands. But now I fully understand Git and I use it free. There are some things I would like to learn more on Git such as Git Pages (setting up that username.github.io) but anyway I still have 7 more weeks to go.

For the fourth and fifth day, it was Javascript time. And I loved it. Even after the pre-work I tried to practice Javascript on Code Wars, I found it much easier than Ruby yet not too easy because it still makes me think. I liked how Rafa, our teacher, had neatly prepared and organized all the materials. We had a couple of mini-exercises which was good, and two major ones.

First was to create a slider function for a home page. Honestly, I didn’t know where to start. I didn’t have any direction on what to do. But after Rafa showed us how to do it, I understood and was also able to implement it continuously. I have the logic in my mind but I just don’t know what to type first.

For the final exercises on JS, we had to make a Spotify preview (30 seconds only) music player widget. It was so cool! I was partnered with Ricard, who by the way also loves Frozen! He already knows a lot on Javascript but still he let me freely code and learn by just giving me directions. It was also nice to see how one should think and construct the code, so I have an idea on what to do next time. By the end of the day, our player was working, complete with search and progress bar.

I’m really looking forward to next week which is Ruby. I had a hard time understanding and doing the pre-work for Ruby, so I don’t know if I could do better this week.