winding down and ramping up

I’ve finished the Web Applications for Everyone Coursera specialization! (proof!) I have really come to like Coursera’s format for learning, but I think what really made me love it (first with Python for Everybody, and now with WA4E) was Dr. Chuck’s teaching style and course materials. It was nice to feel like I was “back in school” again, but it was even better to be able to work at my own pace. I’ve surprised myself by how quickly I went through most of the material, and really grateful to have been able to spend extra time on parts I found complex or parts I really wanted to take the time to explore and enjoy. Coursera is a pass/fail program, but you do get a numerical grade for your own records: I finished WA4E with a score of 99.7 percent.

WA4E and Py4E are all open education resources and can be used and reproduced without permission. I highly recommend them. (Start with Python if you’re new, like me! Python was a great first language.)

I have been thinking about where I’d like to go next. The web applications courses were about back-end app development, and there’s a complementary specialization for web design, which is more front-end and making things pretty– and accessible. Accessibility is near and dear to me, and will forever influence my development and engineering. That may be my next step.

I think I’ll be taking a little more time to wind down and polish up some more projects to show you here (or github), and gearing up to really ramp up my involvement in some interesting open source projects… with some serious job hunting, too. But in the meantime, I think I’ll be checking out Advent of Code.

Cheers!

PHP, SQL, and security

I have been working my way though Dr. Chuck Severance’s Web Applications for Everybody, via Coursera. It’s a four-course specialization that uses PHP and SQL, and I’m enjoying it very much. SQL is fun and interesting (and this will help when I go back to the Python Data Specialization), and PHP is one of those things I recognized in the URLs of browsers, and random error messages I’ve seen over the years, but I had no idea what it was. Now I can make some short programs to do some simple database work focusing on CRUD: Create, read, update, and delete.

I am also all-but-finished with a Cybersecurity for Business specialization. These courses rely on peers to review certain assignments, and the courses don’t seem very active with students– I’ve had trouble getting responses to questions, and right now I’m just waiting on another fellow student to submit an assignment so I can complete my last peer review and finish the specialization. It was pretty interesting– especially as a small business owner without a lot of experience but having read a lot of scary stories about hacks and leaks.

I’m working on re-working some of my PHP and SQL projects so that they don’t violate Coursera’s honor code when I include them in my portfolio. 🙂