Project 3 - Passed!

Ending the year on a high note. :)

I received the evaluation on my resubmitted Project 3, and after cleaning up the requested issues, the result was...

I'm glad that I was able to get the hoped for evaluation result, and realize that in my excitement to get the arcade project in, I had completely missed the basics in my own review of my code. Hopefully, lesson learned and I can remember to watch for this before submitting projects in the future.

It pays to check the site...

I think I missed something in translation.

Students received an email several weeks about about changes to the Udacity site, where we could now submit our projects directly through the site, rather than via email. I already had a few in the pipeline, so I expected that any evaluations would be coming back via email as well, if I sent them in that way.

Apparently, the evaluations will be coming via the site now. I do like the new Udacity FEND site layout. I also appreciate the fact that you can access the evaluation wherever you can get the site (rather than trying to check several different email accounts waiting for a response), but I think it needs to be clearer that the evaluations will be coming from the site now.  As such, my evaluation for project 4 was sitting there since December 11th, and I had no idea.

This new process could be something I completely missed in the email, and I'll take blame for that oversight. In any case, I now have my evaluation and a list of things that need to be addressed in Project 4.

The biggest issue that I can see with my submission, is omitting the full Grunt/gulp/other process automations, which caused things like minimized CSS/JS to be "missing". Apparently minimizing files is part of the content efficiency that is talked about in the course, but not really detailed as such in the rubric. 

I am considering redoing the entire project using gulp, for two reasons.

1. It should allow me to learn how to use such build tools in the content efficiency process, and make it easier to adapt this process to future projects (I suspect project 5 will make good use of this as well).
2. It will help me to meet more of the Udacious level requirements for this project.

It looks less and less likely that I will be done by the end of January (a personal goal), but the rework will be worth it to learn these lessons.

Project 3 is a Hit!!

I was contacted a few days ago by Jessica Lin, one of the course managers at Udacity. She was wanting to get permission to post information about my arcade project (Project 3 in the Front-End Web Development Nanodegree) on their blog. I was more than happy to give my assent.

Today, that blog was published. I wasn't expecting the title of the post to be this:

Permalink to Udacity blog entry

I was blown away by the blog entry. I was hoping that my project would make an impact, and that it would be recognized for the amount of work that I put into it, but to have it selected for this list is beyond my expectations.

I'm not sure why the students' names were not included in the story, but I am sure there is a good reason that I am not aware of yet. I'm just happy to be included.

Project 3 evaluation

I received my evaluation for Project 3 yesterday. I have been asked to make some updates and resubmit the project.

After looking at the review, I realized that I had made some mistakes and should have checked the project more closely before submitting. Simple things that I should have caught (semicolons after function expressions, no semicolons after function declarations) seemed to be my biggest offense.

Lesson learned: use the tools available to you.

Had I used jslint.com or any number of other tools that check JS syntax, I could have caught these issues right away. Instead, I thought I knew enough to not need the tools, and I was proven wrong.

So, after correcting the issues and resubmitting the project, I will be adding those tools into my work routine. I suspect I may have issues with Project 4 as well, since I did not use the recommended tools (Grunt, gulp, minifier) in that project either. If so, I will have them ready for when Project 5 comes around, as it seems that specific project will be a culmination of what we have learned throughout the courses - a true final project.

Project 6 finished

No, I didn't mistype the title. I viewed the coursework for Project 5 (Neighborhood Map), and though it is the next one on my list to do, I didn't feel as if the course gave me enough to work with, to attack the project properly. I did some research on Knockout.js, and decided that I would come back to it once the other course is completed later this month for project 5 (per conversations I had heard from several students and instructors).

So, I jumped into project 6. It turns out, the Jasmine testing that we are asked to do for that project is very similar to unit testing that I have learned for Java. So, I read up on Jasmine, and in two days, I had all of my tests set up and succeeding. I'm not completely positive that I have things working as they were intended to be (as the tests can be a bit cryptic to figure out if you are testing EXACTLY what is expected), but it looks pretty close to what is in the readme file.

I can't seem to come up with any extra tests to add, though, to get a Udacious rating on this project. I'm ahead of where I expected to be, so I can take a few days to think on it. After all, there isn't much more to do until the second course for Project 5 comes out. 

Project 4 Submitted

It was interesting to me, that Project 3 took me almost a month from course start to submission, and yet Project 4 was only a few days from start to finish. I did have a lot more creative license with Project 3 - after all, it was a game that we could customize to our creative desire - but Project 4 was more like a project I would do in my everyday job.

Learning some new tools (Grunt, gulp, etc) was eye-opening, as well as getting to work with Google PageSpeed Insights, but it was actually pretty straightforward for me. My day job is to support existing applications within AT&T, and some of what we do is to look for problems and address them as best we can. Usually our issues are back end ones, though, so this was a nice change of pace.

I didn't actually use the automated tools for my project. Although I know it may have sped up the ability to get this project done, it also felt to me as if I was letting the tools do the work, rather than doing it myself and learning more hands-on. As long as I understood it in the end, it may not have mattered, but I wanted to know that I did the work myself, not some script.

I don't expect to get the "exceeds" rating this time around, as it requires use of those tools (and one page I barely got over the required PageSpeed score). I'm not as worried about it, since I would rather put the time toward the creative projects.

I'm still waiting on the response on Project 3, but I know the evaluators are swamped with last minute submissions, and they only have until Christmas to get those back to the students. I really want to know what the coaches (and especially Mike and Miriam) thought of the game.

Project 3 submitted

I finally decided that I had added all that I should to the project, and submitted it on Friday.

I think the only thing the evaluators may not like is the commenting. I had gone back and forth on the comments, trying to keep them consistent without overdoing it. I think I ended up overdoing it anyway.

I had asked in Piazza about the necessity of JSDoc, and was told it should not affect the project evaluation. It seemed like JSDoc might be overkill for this size project, but I can see where it could be helpful to someone coming along and wanting auto-documentation. I think what I did put in as comments would be enough for someone trying to follow behind me.

In reading up on self-documenting code (search Stack Overflow for several posts about it), it seems that the general consensus is that although code can give you a lot of information about what is is doing, it cannot give you the WHY something was coded a specific way. I tried to leave my comments as "why" explanations, expecting the rest would explain itself. Once I get the review, I'll know whether that was enough.

Final submission link: here

The problem with projects you love...

.. is that they tend not to ever get done.

Case in point: to "pass" Project 3, the arcade game that is designed needs to meet a specific set of criteria that is pretty easy to complete. Watch the lesson, apply what you learn, and make sure you meet the rubric requirements.  I could have turned that version of the project in two weeks ago.

To exceed expectations, this project is really no different than the others: make it your own. Add something, change up how it plays, and you should be reaching that extra level of recognition.

Now, I've heard from several different sources that "web projects are never complete; they can be iterated against and constantly refined". When I like what I am doing, I tend to keep iterating and adding as I go along.

• Game is finished. 
• It's too plain, though. It needs something different. This project is for Udacity... why not make the game theme about Udacity? The player can collect books, instead of gems. Then, they can take the books to the top row, and put them there. Once the row is done, they win. Simple to implement.
• Books added, top row now is a scoring row.
• The player character needs to be Udacity themed too... hey, what if I get permission from Miriam and Mike to use their "likenesses" in the game?
• Characters added. 
• But, it needs a neat intro. Not just an HTML intro... something within canvas, that seems catchy and goes with the game. Gives it something I haven't seen yet.
• Intro done. 
• Well, there should be an exit equivalent too, to wrap the game up.
• Outro done. 
• The top row seems plain. 
• Add building sprites to top row.
• Then I can add...

You can see how this seems to never finish. There's always another neat idea to add, to give the game just a bit more pizazz, a little more to make it stand out. I thought I had finished a while ago.

I am glad that Udacity encourages this kind of exploration within their project structure. Not only have I learned a ton by being able to continue to put the concepts into practice, but I get to stretch creatively, and see appreciation for the work. The coaches are great at giving encouragement, which can be hard when working with 800+ students.

Oh, and my project probably still has another few days of changes before I can call it done... unless I find something else that just HAS to go into it.  :)

What I Did On My Thanksgiving Vacation

I had planned several months ago to take vacation around the Thanksgiving holiday. It was a bit of luck that by doing so, I would have several days to concentrate on Project 3 - and right at the time that I needed to be able to dive deep into adding to the project.

Just like I did with the start of the project, I found that adding code in iterations - one feature at a time - I was able to make a lot of progress in very short amounts of time. I also noticed that using git version control helped immensely, as I could branch off a feature, and if it worked like I wanted, I could simply merge that branch back into master. There was only one case where I tried to do something, and had to completely scrap that idea. Being able to delete that branch and pick up where the master branch had left off, saved me a lot of backtracking or trying to undo the work I had done for the previous few hours.

After a day and a half of coding, I had finished the main game play as I wanted it to be. I started into adding an intro, and tried to think of a way to make the game feel more like a real video game. My thought was to keep as much going on in the canvas object as I could, instead of moving this information into the index.html file, or splitting it out into other files.

I was at a point, where the intro worked, but the game would not start. If I changed a few function calls and a variable, I could play the game, but there was no intro. I went over the code again and again, but could not see where I was having issues. So, off to Piazza I went, posting about my issue and hoping someone would spot the logic flaw I was missing.

I woke up this morning to several emails, advising that my post had been answered. Between Kevin Mayo and Matthew Prather, they had come to the same conclusion, and revealed something I had missed. Basically, I had assumed that since I had established a local variable and its value, and then tried to turn it global, I was essentially not seeing the same variable in the other JS file.

From Matthew's response:

Maybe the problem is the variable "intro" inside of Engine always being true.
So when you set "intro" false elsewhere, it's setting a global variable "intro" false, but Engine sees the intro in its own scope first.

That hit the nail on the head. I assumed that since I was redefining the variable as a global variable, that it would always take the global value. However, I had initially defined the variable inside the Engine object, and JavaScript reads variables from inside outward. Since the variable was defined inside Engine locally, it never went far enough out to see the value in the global version of that variable.

Reassigning the variable outside of Engine got things working immediately, and I learned something in the process.

It's been great to be a part of this cohort, just from the interaction and willingness to help others that I have seen in Piazza and HipChat. I've done my best to help where I can as well, and give back to this same community.

As for this project, I have a little bit of styling to do on the main HTML page to make it look "better", and then cleanup of the commenting in the JS files. Hopefully by the end of the week, this project will be ready for submission.

I can't wait to see what comments I get on the final product.

Project 3

I spent some time going through the Piazza discussions regarding Project 3 (arcade game clone), and through the discussions there (as well as the Office Hours discussion Wednesday), I think I have a better feel for how the project should be approached.

To my surprise, I was able to meet the minimum specs and have a working game within just a few hours. Taking things one by one (getting the player to show up on the screen, coordinating movement, preventing the player from falling off the canvas) really did make this a lot simpler than I thought it would be. As the coaches have said, a lot of the background work has been done in the resources and engine JavaScript files, allowing us to concentrate on the app.js file for our code.

Now comes the fun part: customization!

Several students have gone well beyond the requirements, and made some excellent games. The variations have been fun to see, but I'm wanting to stand out a bit, not going too overboard but still making it memorable and fun to play.

I need to come up with a checklist of what I would like to have, and see how realistic it will be. The plan for now is to have it more Udacity themed, including the backstory (why the player does what they do) and the characters involved. I've already gotten permission from Miriam and Mike (two Udacity leaders for our cohort) to use their names as the names of the player options. I was able to modify some of the game assets to represent each person in game.

Cute Udacity shirts, yes? 

I have a lot of other ideas, but I won't detail them out just yet - some things should be left as surprises. I just hope that I don't try to put too much into this, and end up frustrated with the outcome, or spend way too much time on it. The deadline for the project is several months off - and I don't intend to spend THAT much time on it - but I've delayed the start of the project, and really want to make something good.

I know I can pass the evaluation, but now it's all about being Udacious!

Project 2 - Passed!

Just after finishing my last post, I received an email from Udacity advising that project 2 had been reviewed, but they were going to do a followup interview before marking it complete. Only one week from submission to completion - definitely better than the first project.

The result of the evaluation was...

I was so happy to see that on the evaluation, because I really did try to get the extra "make it yours" touch into the project.

The exit interview for the project was interesting. I was scheduled to be interviewed by Dimka, one of the Udacity coaches. She was nice to talk to, and supportive of the project and the program as a whole. I found the questions to be a bit more generic than I expected, but I assume that is a requirement on Udacity's part, as their students range from non-technical, first time developers to veterans in the field looking for certification of their skills.

There were quite a few questions on my opinions on the project. I think the interview is really two fold - the coach gets to check and make sure you know the material, and they request feedback on the project itself: what you liked, what you didn't like, what could be improved. I found that to be the hardest part of the interview, as I had prepared to review my code, and didn't really consider how to rate the course that teach the project, from my view as a student.

The whole interview took about 15 minutes, and shortly after, an email arrived with my code to enter in the Udacity site, to mark the project complete. So, two down, and a few more to go!

Link to project 2: resume on Github Pages

Now For A Real Challenge... OOJS

I think I have finally come up against something that is going to take time to figure out - Project 3.

Project 1 (HTML and CSS) and Project 2 (JavaScript) were based on concepts that I have used for a while in my work activities. I sat down and watched the class material for Project 3 (Object Oriented JavaScript), and like my previous attempts to understand any OO programming - Java, Perl, PHP all have OO-type constructs that can be used, and Java specifically relies on it from what I have learned -  I read the material, understood what it meant, but felt lost as to how to apply it. Java was particularly an issue, as I ended up with several months between the class itself, and trying to apply the concepts to a task.

I don't know what the cause is, but object oriented concepts seem to not stick with me. The lessons make sense as I am in the classroom, but I can't seem to make them work when presented with a challenge that requires their use.

A class is simple enough: an object that contains properties (values) and methods (functions). I can create a class with few problems. I know how to construct an instance of a class, so that I can modify those values and use them as a unique 'version' of that object. It's when you get to inheritance, and polymorphism, and the interaction of classes with each other, that seems to be my hangup.

I could be overthinking it. It could be a mental block, and I may actually understand this but not be confident in my application of it.

It has been almost a week since watching the lesson, and though I feel like I get the concepts, I still haven't started Project 3. I even went through Piazza to get some hints, based on what others have said. I have not looked though anyone's code or repositories though, as I would hope to at least take a decent stab at it before falling back on others' assistance.

But something is keeping me from even attempting it - and that is not helpful.

Project 2 submitted

I finally sent my version of Project 2 into the reviewers at Udacity.

I say "finally", as I had basically finished the project about a week ago, but I wasn't pleased with the final result. I didn't change the layout drastically after all, though I did test a two column version, but liked the clean look of the single column look. However, I did figure out a few tweaks to make my version unique.

First, I used info from the Piazza forums to figure out how to update the infoWindows in the Google map to use custom data.

Then, using info from StackOverflow, I found a way to color code the pins themselves.

At that point, I wanted to do something that I had not seen yet - let's map the pins to the places on the resume that they refer to!

After a little tweaking with the helper.js file, I was able to get the pins to show up in the separate resume locations. I was pretty happy with that. I modified the colors of the resume, to make it look less drab, and figured I was good to go.

Of course, sleeping on it brought additional ideas forward, and so I thought: what if you click on the pin in the resume, and it takes you to the map?? It turns out, this was the most time consuming portion of the modifications, as any time I tried to use an <A> tag, it broke the layout of the page in a big way. I finally settled on adding an inline javascript command and a little CSS trickery to get the pins to look like clickable links.

Hopefully, there is enough different in this version for the evaluators to consider it "beyond expectations."

Project 1 - Passed!

I just received my evaluation for Project 1 in the Front End Web Dev nanodegree program, almost exactly two weeks after submitting it. And the result...

According to the evaluation, I did exactly what was expected. I thought I had gone beyond by actually including all six projects for the nanodegree on my portfolio page, but compared to many other submissions, I really didn't do a lot more than was required. Some of the students are VERY talented, and did a wonderful job exceeding expectations. 

I'm still happy that I passed before v.2 of the project was required. I didn't find Bootstrap to be necessary, since I could get flexbox to do everything I needed. I do see the reason for teaching Bootstrap, and I can think of several projects at work that could benefit from the framework. It just seemed to be more than what was required, to make my page work.

Passing this project evaluation has been the highlight of the day, since I'm a little under the weather today. But at the same time, it compels me to really put extra effort into project 2. I have it completed, and matching the way the version in the class looks. Hopefully I will feel better later this week, and can add my own spin to the project. 

I think that is a good thing to remember about these classes: get the project to look and work like it is supposed to, then add details to make it stand out after. 

General program thoughts for the end of October

Just a couple of thoughts while I work on refining Project 2 before submitting it...

It's been a week and a half since Project 1 was submitted. It has been taking the full two weeks to get projects returned, from what I understand. The review is very in-depth, which explains the time it takes for it to be returned. I'm hoping that doesn't get longer, though, as Udacity should be starting up a new cohort when November starts, and that will just be more work piled on top of the coaches, if additional help isn't brought in.

Through using git and GitHub during the first two projects, and reading through the resources on Udacity and GitHub itself, I've become comfortable enough to suggest changing off of SVN to git as our version control at work. I'm working up a presentation to use for pitching this to the boss, and I hope that it is as convincing as I think it is in my head.

I was really glad to watch Monday's Office Hours video. They started out by answering one of the biggest questions I had about Project 2 - why push beyond the expectations, to make a project completely Udacious? There is a real reason for it. It's not just to show you know the material, but to make your version stand out in the crowd and really express what you can do to a potential employer. I was concerned that going too far beyond the rubric would make it hard to tell that you actually did what was requested, but they are encouraging students to do just that. "Make it your own."

So, this weekend will be making Project 2 my own - and hopefully having my Project 1 review in my email box by then.

Javascript Basics and final project (for this specific class)

I just finished the lessons for the Javascript Basics course, and completed the project as designed throughout the course. I already knew quite a bit of what was taught in the course, as I had exposure to JSON through some of the Perl AJAX websites we designed at work, but I did learn some things that I didn't know about Javascript itself.

The most striking concept I learned was encapsulation. I had heard from my Java classes that "everything is an object", but I never considered functions to be objects of their own. I had always considered them outside the object realm. Having the ability to embed functions directly into the object itself, lends a sort of modularity that I had not though possible. Items which might have had global scope (and possibly caused issues with other functions using identical variable names) are instead put into a local scope, minimizing that possibility for error.

I still have a ways to go with this project, however. Although the project as it stands now meets the requirements of the grading rubric, it does not have the polish and "individuality" that the coaches are looking for. My project resembles the mockup well, so I know I have the basics covered. What I don't have just yet, are the extra bells and whistles (and from some examples I have seen, complete redesign of the layout) that is apparently becoming an expected part of the process.

With students posting their projects on Piazza for review, I wonder just how far beyond the mockup we can go, before the project is considered to be outside the expected results. For example, there is a student who decided to change the layout into a two column display. I admit, it looks tremendously good, and it has all the required elements displayed on the page. I just wonder where the line is between changing things to improve the look of the page, and going too far outside the box.

Javascript Basics course, through Lesson 1

I started into the Javascript basics course, and though I've only finished the first two lessons (Lesson 0 and Lesson 1, interestingly enough), I am not finding this class as polished as the others. My major concern, though, is the fact that I don't feel like I am learning what I need to learn during the explanation portion of the lesson.

I am used to classes that show you exactly what you need to know, and then let you practice that in the followup questions or quizzes. In this class, I feel that I am given a generic idea of what I need to learn, and the detail that I am supposed to learn comes in the quiz answers, afterward.

It may be intended that what we are supposed to learn is essentially pushed to the student's side, but it leaves myself (and several other students, from what I read on Piazza) with a lot of confusion and doubt that we are learning appropriately.

I had posted the following on the Piazza site, but for the sake of illustration, I have added it here:

For example, String Manipulation Quiz 1 gives a task of changing a string, and even gives a hint to use slice() in the instructor's notes. Why wasn't slice, or other string manipulators, presented in the lesson for students to understand? The "explain the details" approach was used in the Intro to CS class, so that students understood exactly what they were expected to use, and how to use it. For some reason, that approach is not used here. I don't know if that is by design, or just how it came out.

I found myself clicking on the box to get past the quiz, and learning more from the answer presentation than trying to use the information given before the quiz and hashing through it on my own.

I don't like being critical of the instructors, as I am sure they are putting a lot of work into these classes and presentations for us. Both instructors have been entertaining, and they do know their stuff. I just wish the presentation was more detailed, with more time spent on explaining exactly what the instructors expect you to know, and less on relying on the student to fill in the gaps.

Version Control - Git and Github

While waiting on the results of my first project, I went ahead and started the lessons for Version Control using Git and Github. I had started using Github on a different Udacity course (Make your own 2048), though I wasn't aware that Udacity had a class on using Git at that point.

I looked around for more information on using Github specifically, and though the documentation at Github's site is pretty good, I did find a quick course at CodeSchool on Git that was free. Unfortunately, the course there goes over the command line so quickly, that I really didn't feel like I had learned enough about it to retain the information.

When I started the Udacity course, I was relieved that the lessons were full of detail and did take the time to explain the different commands in such a way that I was able to really "get" the material, as well as practice using it.

I did not expect, though, that the GitHub portion would continue to use the git commands. From my previous work with the GitHub page, I expected it would be completely about the web interaction. Instead, the lesson correlated what I learned on the command line with the options in the web site.

One thing the course did not go over was the downloadable programs GitHub for Windows or GitHub for Mac. These programs basically allow you to do a lot of the command line work that is talked about in the lessons, and moves it into a GUI interface that works well to guide you through commits (including the ability to add commit messages without opening a separate editor) and looking at code differences in much the same way that 'git diff' does. This may have been left out of the lessons, in much the way that the HTML class talks about using IDEs as a tool instead of a crutch - the program simplifies the process, but you really need to know what is going on behind the scenes in order to use it to your best advantage.

Overall, like the HTML class, I have extended what I thought I knew well, and applied it in the projects each class presents. The training I am receiving in the nanodegree program is definitely making me feel like taking this series of courses is going to be well worth the time and effort.

First Project - Thoughts and Takeaways

I am now two weeks into the Nanodegree program, and today, I sent in the first project for review.

I started out by pulling up the Intro to HTML and CSS class that accompanies the project, as recommended, but didn't watch the class from beginning to end. I jumped around in the class, picking topics that seemed to be newer to me, such as the @media CSS and the semantic tags portions of the class, and skipped over the beginning CSS parts. I have been creating HTML sites for work for a while now, so I figured I didn't need to go through a lot of the basics.

Well, I was wrong.

My knowledge of HTML is still stuck in what I learned ten years ago about HTML 4. I had read about HTML5, but never really paid attention to it, as it didn't seem to be relevant at that time - after all, the web pages I developed worked fine in Internet Explorer using the HTML I already knew. I had heard of <canvas> tags, and other neat ideas - but none of that worked in the environment that we used at work, so I didn't pay much attention.

So, after finishing lessons 1 and 2 in the HTML class, I realized there were concepts and lessons that I would learn, even at this starting phase of the program. I think this is a good thing, as it shows me that Udacity does have something to teach me right from the beginning. This wasn't going to be a waste of time, trying to slog through the easy stuff to get to something new to learn.

I did learn that I have fallen behind in my self-taught web skills - and this program is going to correct that little flaw.

I jumped into working on the project. I created some DIVs, laid out some CSS, and promptly realized that I wasn't going to be able to create this project as simply as I had expected. The header would not line up, no matter what I tried to do. I went back to the lessons, and decided to use the flexbox CSS for aligning my page. After some trial and error, I wasn't getting the results I thought I should. A little more research turned up my issue, which was explained in the instructor notes: since I am using a Mac for my operating system, Safari requires a little more CSS for flexbox to work properly.

I did go back to the lessons to finish watching all of them. When I start the next project, I am going to watch each lesson all the way through, even though I have experience with JSON and JavaScript. There may be some basics to learn there, just as I needed to learn for this project.

The Piazza forums have been very helpful in getting a lot of questions answered. Seeing what other students are having issues with, has made it easier for me to know what to look for, or what resources are available for learning. The Flexbox CSS guide that was posted in Piazza helped me to clean up my code and get it working the way it should.

Overall, I think I have a better understanding of how I need to approach the projects, and that should help me to get the most out of this program that I can.

Almost forgot the important part: my first project submission!

Where to start...

What better way to show people how easy blogging can be, than to put together a simple one to show as an example, as well as getting my own thoughts down for others to read and comment on.

A little about me: I am 43 years old. I live in a little suburban town in southern Illinois, not too far from St Louis, Missouri, USA. I work for AT&T as a programmer, and I love what I do. Most of my work is centered around creating web tools and reporting for internal clients. This requires me to know some HTML, CSS and Javascript, but the majority of my work is done on the back end with Oracle databases and Perl or Java interfaces to that data.

My main reason for joining the Front End Web Development Nanodegree program is to strengthen my understanding of front end technologies, to help our team make the most responsive and well-designed sites that we can. From the looks of the program description, I should be right on track to do that.

I'm looking forward to what I can learn from the program, and hope that I can contribute back to the community in some meaningful way.