A Brief Update

11 May 2019

Two Weeks of Fun

True to my word: two React SPAs in two weeks. This kept me a bit busy, so I really didn’t have a chance to post anything last week, or to work on the site at all. Also, last weekend was a family-centric weekend, so I wasn’t home as much as I normally would be.

In spite of not feeling well, on Friday I was able to finish up a single page application that I started on Wednesday. I put in a lot of work, and learned some more things about scoping variables correctly with JavaScript. I really had to push to make it happen, and I have to say, I am pleased with what I accomplished in about 24 hours of work. I am not satisfied with my limitations, though, and how much time I spent looking for answers to a question that might be simple for a more seasoned developer. I hope to not repeat my mistakes, and to retain the knowledge that I earned by making mistakes for a few hours.

The application, which I will put on my github site soon, is a Mad Libs style app that I am calling Bad Libs. I pulled a 19th century personal add from the internet to use as the basic text. It is pretty complete, except for the need for form clearing after the user enters text.

Last week I finished up a calculator, that I could have worked on more intently as I did with Bad Libs. It’s not very sophisticated, and I probably will not upload that to Github. The calculator app really has some issues, and it has to do mostly with the UI.

Next Week

There is a lot to do this week to prepare for a visit to my in-laws, so I am not sure about productivity in programming. I will be looking at making something simple this week. Perhaps using the formula for converting a value from one range into a value from another range.

It would be cool to start exploring logarithmic scales versus linear scales, and how to convert one to the other. I suspect it will be a little more involved, and would require dicrete normalization between steps. That will take a little more research.

Arrays

I have started to work on a document about manipulating arrays, and I hope to refresh, renew, and expand my knowledge of arrays and array methods. One of the problems that I tried to solve last week was converting an array of objects into an array of keys for the properties of the objects. It reminds me that I need to continue work on basic data structure manipulation.

I hope to update this document periodically, and keep it published as I work.