First Semester at AltSchool Africa
So, the last three months have been pretty… eventful, I should say. A lot has happened since I passed the AltSchool Africa entrance exam and gained admission to study Cloud Development. I’ve learned a lot of new things about the programming and non-programming aspects of being a developer, and I’m getting better at both (I hope!). I went in with high hopes and an open mind, ready to learn, and so far, it’s been an excellent start. The task-based system is challenging but rewarding, integrating working and learning seamlessly.
AltSchool Africa is unlike the other schools you know, where students sit in rows and learn lessons from teachers who teach them how to read, write and add numbers. Instead, it’s focused on producing world-class developers and providing budding developers with the necessary skills to jumpstart their careers.
The semester kicked off in April with the onboarding (or orientation), detailing helpful information, such as an introduction to the Learning Management System, Slack, and our live class hosting platform, Hopin.
The onboarding was a great way to acquaint us with our course instructors and the program. Each semester spans three months, and this semester, the focus was on introducing us to the basics of programming, with a bit of Front-End Development. First came HTML, then CSS, before we covered JavaScript in the final month before the end-of-term assessment.
HTML and CSS are the building blocks of any website, and they are used to beautify and add functionality to your website while building it from scratch. HTML defines how your website should look and behave and is often called “the skeleton” or “the blueprint” because it holds all of the information about what goes on on a page. So, gaining further knowledge on how to wrangle all the HTML elements into a functional website, be it headings, lists, linking pages together, and navbars, among other things.
CSS, or Cascading Style Sheets, dictates how HTML elements should appear onscreen or be printed in printable formats like PDFs or ebooks (think Word documents).
I learned how to use JavaScript to make websites responsive and do things other than look pretty. I also learned how to manipulate images and videos when working on a website. JavaScript is the most popular client-side programming language widely used for web development in conjunction with, you guessed it, HTML and CSS. Getting into JS functions and syntax was a step up from HTML/CSS and added an extra layer of functionality to the web apps I created.
Watching tutorials isn’t enough, so I practiced by solving a few simple code challenges and taking note of critical concepts like variables, functions, for loops, and loads of other stuff.
Speaking of projects, I created two web apps/websites over the first semester. One was to build an ‘About Me’ page with HTML and CSS, which was a good test of what I’d learned up to that point. Working with containers, adding a navbar to move smoothly through the page, adding tables and linking it all together to improve functionality and numerous CSS terms and concepts like flexboxes, grids, padding, border radii, adding and playing around with colours, amongst other things.
The second was JavaScript-focused and was oriented toward creating a function to fix specific problems. It took a bit of head-scratching and a few days of peering closely at my IDE, trying to will a solution into existence, when I hit a particularly rough patch. However, I got there in the end, and my test was passed by Gradr before I pushed it to GitHub to be graded by the course instructors.
I was placed in a learning circle (or a group) along with several other aspiring Cloud Developers early on in the semester. Getting to work with a group of people who I could learn and grow together with was another new experience. This was a trial run for my future career and also helped me know how to work with others effectively.
From my experience so far, working as part of a team will teach you how to divide tasks among different members of the group, communicate effectively with other members of the team, and compromise when necessary. This can be especially important if there’s tension between two individuals or if one person does not agree with another person’s ideas or methods for completing their task(s).
Everyone needed to develop strong interpersonal skills to understand their strengths & weaknesses at any given moment — which meant learning how to deal with conflict and stay calm during stressful situations when things aren’t going exactly according to plan.
I learned a lot of new things in this class. HTML and CSS were my favourite because they are the languages you need to create websites, and they allowed me a lot of creative freedom while giving me a glimpse into Frontend Development. Javascript was also interesting, as it’s used for many different things like making games or even interacting with your computer’s operating system. All in all, it was fun, challenging, and very taxing at times throughout the semester.
I think that’s all for now. The second semester starts soon, and I couldn’t be more excited to discover what’s in store.
