What new programming / CS related thing or concept gave you excitement?

1

Currently, I have 3 things / concept that motivates me:

1. Object Oriented Programming

At first, the whole concept of modelling Classes and Objects felt arcane to me. But after spending time reading and watching tutorials, OO style JavaScript made me happier when I write code. Sure, there’s the work of setting up the Classes initially, plus the different opinions on how to properly create Objects, plus the arguments on not doing OOP in JavaScript almost put me off. But the idea of modelling the Real World, no matter how cheesy, makes me excited on using the paradigm on my projects.

2. Testing

I think I can safely speak on the behalf of my newbie brethren that testing feels like a total waste of time. ***Like, my project took 4 hours to complete, plus another hour to debug, now I have to write tests when it’s obviously not broken?!***. That’s my initial reaction when I got introduced to the concept of writing tests.

It’s very very very tempting to convince yourself that’s it not worth the effor. But a thought came to my mind that changed my view on it. How would I like if the software that I use on my daily life were not tested?

It’s not that hard to setup, the DSL (domain-specific language) is pretty straightforward, and bam. The quality of my code just got a lot better.

Plus, it’s one of those things that makes me feel I’m doing serious programming :smiley:

3. Writing code everyday

This is the one I’m really getting into nowadays. I try to spend 3-4 hours a day of writing code and learning programming / CS stuff (not including school work). This mindset opens up a lot for me. There is something out there to do!. I’ve been:

  1. Rewriting past FCC projects, OO style.
  2. Putting said projects under version control.
  3. Learning new tech (that’s immediately useful) such as SASS and various npm packages.
  4. I even got exposed to Ruby last night when I created my very first blog through jekyll!

One point that I like to make is how much fun I’m having when I do projects that I planned myself. Compared to when it’s a part of a curriculum (like FCC), it felt less like of a chore. Anyone else share this same feeling? :grin:

How about you guys? What are you up to these days?

1 Like