Start To A Chronicles of 30 Days Of HTML & CSS Coding….focusing on pure fundamentals!
By: Karim Soliman
Tags: HTML, CSS, Codingbootcamp, UX, Coding

What better way to commit myself to learning something, than to also write about it so that others can read up on it. It’s like a means of self-disciplining yourself, at a PUBLIC level. Love the approach, never done it before but all excited about it.

Alright folks, quick background. The name’s Karim (you can also call me “Kay”), I’m an economist turned designer. Also, I’m an ex-banker, ex-trader, ex-investment analyst, all components that make me the designer that I’m today. Grew up in many countries….yada yada …[skipping to the good parts]…, I am a UX/UI Designer (a.k.a. Product Designer).

Photo by Mohamed Boumaiza on Unsplash

As I am currently enrolled in the ever-awesome Designer Track online bootcamp, created and taught by the extremely skilled and experienced folks at Bloc.io (now part of the Thinkful family), I wanted to push myself a little further and drill down on the fundamentals of coding (yes, I said coding and not programming — big difference). I won’t get into the details of the Bloc’s online Designer Track bootcamp program, but a little point here to complement this story. This online UX/UI design bootcamp — unlike others on the market — actually gives you a holistic approach to learning about digital product design. What this means? Well, it means you not only learn about UX and UI core fundamentals and practice a lot on that, but the program also requires you to also learn about the coding aspects (i.e.development/frontend coding).

Thus, to complement my learning, and become better in my new career, I decided that I need to also practice the fundamentals of coding more on my own.

Remember when you were a kid and went on to learn how to bike? You don’t remember? Well that’s fine, I don’t remember myself — but you get the point! I always picture coding as the same idea as biking (or even driving a car for that matter), you need to practice a lot to get the idea through. It’s not that the fundamentals are difficult or it’s like rocket-science, but you need to have them on the back of your mind while working. And with practice, it’s not only the number of hours that count, but the consistency and committed behavior to the act. Small bits everyday, practiced EVERYDAY goes a long way than putting in so many hours on one day!

So, here I am deciding to do just the same and practice a lot over the coming few weeks. I thought of starting simple and doing the following:

A. My scope: Read and practice HTML & CSS, by focusing on pure (correct) fundamentals.

B. My timeline: Do so by practicing everyday and to make myself committed to the act, I’m only going to practice for one hour — however I have to practice these 60 minutes daily and consecutively!

C. My deliverables: In addition to the learning process and training, part of what I aim to deliver is building the fundamentals blocs. Thus, I will document anything I learn everyday. This means I MUST write what I learn everyday — even if its super basic. To explain something to someone else only means that I must really work that muscle on top of my body to focus on what I’m learning and practicing.

These are the ABCs that I will work with. Oh, and one more thing, I start tomorrow (November 24th, 2020). See you tomorrow as I start setting the fundamental blocks to my learning journey!

To that I leave you with one of my favorite proverbs (this one is from China):

Shui di shi chuan — “Constant dripping of water wears away the stone.”