Week 1 of Immersive Full Stack MERN Bootcamp Learning
I am studying with @UCBerkeleyExt, in this article I cover my first week of projects and process of learning full stack MERN
Currently I am enrolled in the Full Stack bootcamp with UC Berkeley. It is an intensive full time program that lasts for three months. At the time of writing this, I am nearing the end of the program.
🤓 Greetings travelers! I wanted to give a break down of all of the projects I created and everything I learned in the first week of my bootcamp. In this article I will break down the learning process through each project.
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Learning Full Stack MERN with UC Berkeley
As you may know, I studied Front End Development through Skillcrush before signing up for this bootcamp, so in some ways I felt comfortable with the content for this first week. Even with that self-study experience, I still learned an incredible amount through this more high-pressure process of education. Which was exactly what I needed to have the exponential growth I was seeking in my knowledge.
Each week in this program we were required to turn in two graded homework challenges. At the end of the first month we had a graded group project.
Outside of that we had several in-class coding activities each day and every 3-4 days we would have an in-class mini project that was often just as challenging as any graded work we had to turn in.
Week 1: HTML, CSS, Git, and Advanced CSS
Module 1 HW Challenge - horiSEOn Accessibility Refactor
→ View Repository ← | → View Live Site ←
The goal of this project was to take an existing website and refactor the code so that it adheres to better accessibility protocols. This was a good first project to not only illustrate the concepts we were learning, but also to illustrate that we had the skills to utilize tools like git and GitHub.
Technology Used: HTML, CSS, VSCode, Git, Github
In Class Mini Challenge - Basic Landing Page
→ View Repository ← | → View Live Site ←
This was an in class challenge with no starter code. The main goals were for us to apply our knowledge of how to build out HTML and how to properly apply CSS selectors to give it the look desired. I ended up coding this one in about 30-60minutes and I was pretty proud of being able to accomplish that because previously I struggled with just laying out lines of code to begin with, which made me a lot slower. The pressure of time turn-around definitely helped with this!
Module 2 HW Challenge - Janet Webster’s Portfolio
→ View Repository ← | → View Live Site ←
Nothing like being thrown into the deep end of the pool in order to learn how to swim. For my Front End Developer certification that I received this past summer, ALL of my work that I did was to build up to being able to create an awesome portfolio. Now, in the first week of taking this course I had to do the exact same thing.
I was able to take a lot of the lessons (and code) that I had learned previously to apply to this project, but I still put in the effort to take the lessons that I had learned so far (accessibility and how to make a good GitHub repo) and made sure I applied it to this project. I also completely revamped the look and feel of it.
In Class Mini Challenge - CSS Snippet Cheat Sheet
→ View Repository ← | → View Live Site ←
This in class mini project was made in collaboration with my class-mate Thai, check out his GitHub. Flexbox is definitely one of the more difficult skills to learn in CSS and we really had to “flex” those muscles in this mini.
The challenges in this course really forced me to better understand this functionality. I also used the Mimo app to help myself better conceptualize how it all functioned.
What did you think? Leave me a comment and share!
I wanted to begin cataloging this learning process, to hopefully give folks insight into not only my learning journey, but also what it’s like to take a full time bootcamp like this. I’d love to hear from you if you enjoyed this article!