Self-Taught Developer Journal, Day 6: Pivot and The Odin Project
Tags: todayilearned, beginners, devops, codenewbie
Published: 2021-11-28 04:16:34

Today I learned…

## Pivot
Life is so strange sometimes, or maybe it’s just the YouTube algorithm, but I was watching Thomas Frank's video, [*7 Books EVERYONE in Their 20s Should Read*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXkJnuu2iYE&ab_channel=ThomasFrank), this morning and a book he recommended caught my attention. The book was [*Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One by Jenny Blake*](https://www.amazon.com/Pivot-Only-Move-That-Matters-ebook/dp/B00ZQH2UCS/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=pivot&qid=1638068377&sr=8-2) and it's meant for anyone looking to move or change careers. It was the perfect recommendation for my life at the moment. I bought the book and currently reading it. So far, its been awesome at helping me navigate my thoughts and I wish I had started this journey with reading the book first. Better late than never.

## The Odin Project
I've been having a tough time being engaged with the Web Developer Bootcamp by Colt Steele on Udemy. It wasn't because of the content, I think he's a great teacher and its a great course, but I think I was looking for something else. So, ta-da, the Odin Project! Now, the Odin Project I've already heard of in passing a few times, but it came up again yesterday when I started reading [*The Coding Career Handbook by Shawn Wang*](https://learninpublic.org/) and it was listed as a resource. After seeing the Odin Project pop up so many times, I finally decided to check it out. I was impressed by the Foundations Path. It was simple, direct, and included projects very early. I was really looking for something that was more hands on and to the point since I already have programming experience. I also liked how they have their own Discord community.

In short, I am now switching to the Odin Project (sorry Colt) and already halfway through since the first half I covered on Udemy.

* Flexbox 
  * A way to arrange items into rows or columns, where those items grow or shrink based on rules that you define.
  * Not just a single CSS property but a toolbox of properties
  * A flex container is any element that has *display: flex* on it. A flex item is any element that lives directly inside of a flex container.
  * **Any element can be both a flex container and a flex item.** Said another way, you can also put *display: flex* on a flex item, and then use flexbox to arrange its children.
* Axis
  * The flexbox is composed and referred in terms of two axes - the main axis and cross axis.
  * The main axis is defined by the *flex-direction* property and is horizontal or row by default.
  * The cross axis is perpendicular to the main axis.
* Alignment
  * Arranging items inside of a flexbox by aligning or justifying them along the main-axis with *justify-content* and cross-axis with **align-items**.
  * Properties are applied on the flex container.
* Gap
  * Adds a specified space between flex items, similar to margin.

Resources:
[The Odin Project](https://www.theodinproject.com/)
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/CSS_Flexible_Box_Layout/Basic_Concepts_of_Flexbox

Day 5: https://dev.to/jennifer_tieu/self-taught-developer-journey-day-5-1ee8
Please refer to [Starting My Self-Taught Developer Journey]( https://dev.to/jennifer_tieu/starting-my-self-taught-developer-journey-2dga) for context.