The Iron Yard - Week 1 Review

Week 1 is finished! We made it through! We have sixteen Front-Enders in our class, and we have covered a lot of ground during the first week. We have learned how to use HTML, CSS, Sass, git, and the command line. We have made several layouts and reproduced two websites on our own. Very enlightening!

Although I am an optimist and have a good outlook on things most days, there were several “throw my hands up in the air” moments this past week. Why doesn’t padding work the correct way on a parent element in CSS?!! However, by and large I can see the bigger picture of really GETTING the material.

The hardest thing has been being in Austin away from my wife and four kids back in Dallas. The focused work and study time has been incredible and necessary, but the hugs and experiences I am missing cannot be made up later. Thankfully, Dallas is not too far away, so I was able to head home for the weekend. I have to keep my eye on the prize and get my skills to the level that a company will want to hire me to be a part of their team. As a former band director, I have a TON of soft skills ranging from leadership down to organization to communication to management (not the same as leadership!).

Now…let’s see what Week 2 has in store. I hear that we dig into JavaScript, which is what I have mostly studied leading up to this point!

Written by Mike Mathew who lives and works in Dallas building useful things. Sometimes he posts on Mastodon. Mike also wears many hats at Presto Assistant where he is a co-founder, owner, and product engineer.