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So it begins!

This is a little out of the box for me. Don't particularly fancy myself a writer. Although, I did try working on a short story once about a guy who uses his big toe as fishing bait...didn't go so great. Probably worth noting - there won't be any horror short stories in here - no toe tales - just some ramblings of someone who is about to embark on the journey of web development.

Maybe a little back story about myself will be helpful. My name is Colin Di Meo, I'm 27 years old and presently residing in Durham, NC (transplant from NJ). For the past 10 years I busted my butt as a musician, and up until recently (March of 2017) I was extremely active. I was touring the past 3 years around 200 or so days a year, and the years previous to that (while comparatively leaner) were still busy as well. I decided to "throw in the towel" sometime around the middle of 2016. I was tired. I was falling out of love with my instrument. The shows didn't feel as exciting, even when the people numbered the thousands. That was my sign.


Somewhere along the way, chugging 100's of miles down US highway systems, I found myself swaddling through the noise of Reddit and Quora posts about "which programming language to learn first" or "which programming language is best" and other variations of the impossibly definitive questions we pose to Google. Well, that started me off. Next thing I knew I was lamely attempting to digest a proprietary language for a 2D game engine called GameMaker Studio. I got through a few tutorials, and even finished a basic platforming game. But 2D is lame! That's so old I thought, I wanna make something badass...like Skyrim!!! Well, several dozen hours of C# tutorials for Unity later, I realized I was way over my head. I needed help.

That brings us to now. I've enrolled, and have been accepted to the Iron Yard in Durham. My cohort begins on July 17th, and between now and then I've got a slew of material I'm going to be combing through to best prepare myself for the program. Armed with a few books on JS, JQuery, HTML & CSS - I'm ready to go. Here I will be posting trains of thought, snippets of code, and as I make my way through - my experience at the Iron Yard. 

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Day One @ The Iron Yard

I just walked through the door after my first day at The Iron Yard. Wow. My brain feels like it's swelled up like a sponge. It feels like it turned itself on for the first time in years. Even after the first day, you can tell the pace is going to be on the quick side. You're just hammering into material, not expected to comprehend it deeply, but at least conceptually in some regards. We tore into Git & GitHub quite a bit - which was funny because leading up into the course I had brushed off terminal usage as a trivial component in the face of learning HTML, CSS & JS. Oh how wrong I was! Tonight and the rest of this week I'll be making sure I'm maximizing my time in the terminal so I can really get that down pat. We got into some of the structural realities of HTML in some of the homework (which I worked on during our free work time) which was easy enough after pounding through Ducketts book last month. This is rambling and ill conceived, but I have to admit I...

Here we go!

Class starts Monday morning...tonight there's an install party for my Iron Yard cohort at our campus in Durham. The past few weeks have been hectic, between family visiting, friends moving into town and a small vacation to the beach. I'm pleased with the work I've accomplished thus far, between getting a website live with the help of  www.teamtreehouse.com  and their website tutorial, a good intro grasp on HTML & CSS fundamentals from Jon Duckett's wonderful book and some really great JS basics with  www.codeschool.com . I decided to end today after their Part 3, Level 1 section as to not get too far ahead of myself. I wanted to become familiar with it, but I also didn't want to burn myself out on some of the headier topics, I think that'll be easier for me to tackle in a classroom environment. Can't say it enough, I'm just really excited. This isn't something I thought I'd be doing, something I always looked at as this unreachable, tech wiz...

Git damnit...

Phew...had my intro to command line and Git today. My push kept going toward a repository I hadn't directed it toward (or did, and stupidly didn't realize). After deleting and remaking everything I managed to get it to work. I'm not entirely sure I understand the upside of using Git & the terminal for pushing files - but I expect that will become more clear as I continue learning and applying my new knowledge. The satisfaction derived from being faced with an issue and solving it is immense. Indeed, this must be a required bone in the programmers body. I finished Nick Pettits' Treehouse portfolio tutorial yesterday as well, which is currently live @ www.colindimeo.com - however, all the content is placeholder with that provided in the tut. I will be updating it within the week. Look out for that! (Maybe I'll sneak a little JS in there too!)