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Learning Front-End Web Development! part 1

Learning Front-End Web Development! part 1

Whenever I meet someone, old friend or new, and they find out I live in the UK I get the same question: “What is it like, living in London?”

I always struggle to answer it. My basic response is that I love my job, and I love my apartment. What else is there to love?

Wait! Before anyone gets offended let me explainI travel quite a bit for work, so whenever I am in London I make use of the opportunity to max out on time at the office, as well as time at home or at the gym. My routine used to be home -> office -> home. Now it is home -> gym -> office -> home. Note there isn’t even errands or a grocery store in that routine. Not because I am so fabulous that I have servants (I do not live at Buckingham palace regrettably), but rather because in the UK you can order everything online. Including milk and eggs. Why not get my groceries delivered if I can at the same cost as going out to the store to schlep them home myself? You get the idea though, I am not enjoying the fabulous museums, the shopping or anything else London has to offer on a regular basis. Given my routine, it would make no difference if I lived in Aladdin, Wyoming (population: 15), or in London.

 

aladdin and me in wyoming picture

It would be a true waste to live in London and not enjoy it though, so I have now set my heart of finding a bit more work-life balance and getting out more. While London has some things in common with other major cities (abundance of museums, parks, shopping), there is also a wealth of new professional experiences you can acquire here. Part of my plan to enjoy London to the fullest is to make use of this wealth of resources available to develop my skill set, meet new people and engage my brain in different ways beyond work. What better way to do this than to take a course?

And that is exactly what I am going to do!

I am no stranger to web development. Twelve or so years ago I built my first website using just HTML. I remember sitting in my grandmothers living room coding away and sometimes logging in to what was very expensive dial-up internet to look up something I needed to know. Much later I played around with editing some CSS templates for other websites I had. Even later I picked up programming in R for my PhD thesis work. Needless to say, I have some interests in programming languages.

While I am comfortable editing some CSS templates and I have a general understanding of HTML, I wanted to formalize my experience and actually learn front-end web development from the beginning. I am really excited to start my course tomorrow morning at Steer. I will be focusing full time on developing skills in CSS, HTML5, responsive design, grid systems, animation, and jQuery this coming week. It will surely be intense with this many topics to cover, but I can’t wait what I’ll be able to do when the week is over. Chances are I will try out some of my new tricks on this website to start, so stay tuned!

 


Christine Buske is a former academic who left science at the bench, and now considers herself a woman in tech. She is a frequently invited speaker, and enjoys talking about career transformation (particularly leaving academia for the business world), tech, issues around women in tech, product management, agile, and outreach. She is a proud Canadian resident, and qualifies as a "serial expat".

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  1. Well Christine enjoy the course I’m sure you will finish the week with a greater knowledge and understand of web design so we all expect a singing and dancing website !

    • Christine Buske

      13 April

      Thanks! Appreciate the comment, and we’ll see how much I learn. So far so good anyhow.

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