Sat, August 10, 2024

Today, Codecademy reminded me that learning is a social activity and encouraged us to review our fellow learners' code. The forums are organized by project, with different certificate paths intersecting, bringing together learners with varying experience levels and tech stacks. This makes meaningful commenting a bit of a challenge, but it's also a great opportunity.

I found a project at a similar skill level to mine and decided to walk through the code. There were some revelations—more on those in a bit—but I also shared a couple of design tips. For instance, I suggested keeping navigation elements aligned on a single visual axis for clarity. I also mentioned that triangle shapes, especially inverted ones, can be tricky in design and are often best avoided. I wasn't sure what kind of feedback I'd receive as a junior developer, so it was great to see my suggestions appreciated.

Now, about what I learned from this experience: two main takeaways. First, I realized I want to dive deeper into exploring navbar header options. I believe there's room for improvement in both my layout design and the maintainability of my code. This led me to revisit best practices for using class and id tags in HTML and CSS. My AI pair programmer was a big help here, clarifying that id tags are ideal for major sections like headers, footers, and main content areas. Meanwhile, classes are better suited for subsections within these areas, as they make CSS rules more flexible and maintainable-—id tags are harder to override.

Finally, I was reminded of the importance of being appropriately specific, but not overly so, in CSS rule declarations. This also contributes to flexibility and maintainability in the long run.

Good learning all around!