Creating the first Figma mock-ups!
Hello and welcome back! This is the second issue of Building The Aerial Arts Hub — Journal of a Newbie Developer. Here’s what’s been happening behind the scenes over the past two weeks.
What I’ve done
I’ve been focused on getting the first mock-ups of The Aerial Arts Hub underway. It’s going pretty well, partly thanks to how simple and intuitive I’ve found Figma to be. It’s my first time using it and I appreciate that I can get things done instead of wasting time figuring out how it works!
If you’re not familiar with Figma, it’s a free online platform for interface design—meaning you can use it to design the interface (what users see and interact with on their screens) of your app, website, software, etc.
I started out wanting to create a simple wireframe (basically using blank boxes and placeholder text to indicate where elements are eventually gonna go) as I’d heard it’s ideal to start with a wireframe vs. jumping into a mock-up straight away. However, I quickly realised that the bare-bones style of wireframes was annoying me and I needed more detail.
So I left wireframes behind and switched to designing more detailed mock-ups of all the different pages/views instead…
I don’t think it’s the “proper” way of designing things, but I’m not a professional designer, so I don’t think it matters too much—I’m just creating these mock-ups so I have something to reference once I start coding.
What I’m working on
I’m not even close to done with all the mock-ups (the pictures above constitute most of what I have). I want to create mock-ups of every single page/view I’ll be incorporating into the site, which is going to take quite a bit of time.
The next views to get done will be the main Resources page and all of the sub-pages under that. A whole lot of work… 😅
What I’m learning
My key resources for learning programming have been The Odin Project and freeCodeCamp for the past six months or so, with the occasional Scrimba course thrown in.
I’ve got The Odin Project on hold for now—I’ve been working through the Foundations curriculum and realised that I’m getting lost and I need way more practice with JavaScipt before I feel ready to move on to the full-stack path. I’m getting that practice in through the freeCodeCamp JavaScript Algorithms and Data Structures course.
I don’t particularly like learning from freeCodeCamp because I don’t think the platform explains or breaks down information with enough depth, but I love it for putting the knowledge that I gained elsewhere into practice. So, for the next few weeks, my learning is going to mostly consist of freeCodeCamp projects!
I also recently dipped my toes into Codewars, a platform filled with bite-size coding challenges. My biggest struggle with JavaScript is that once I have to apply anything I’ve learned out of context, it’s like I suddenly don’t know anything anymore, so these little exercises are super helpful. I’m excited to try my hand at more of them!
What’s next
I’m hoping to be done with all the mock-ups by the time the next issue of this newsletter goes out two weeks from now. Once that’s done, the coding will begin. 😬
As for my learning journey, once I wrap up the freeCodeCamp course and feel more confident in my JavaScript capabilities, I’ll finish up the Foundations curriculum and finally start one of the full-stack paths at The Odin Project!
I’m eyeing the Ruby on Rails path, the main reason being that two of my favourite developers (Nadia from The StoryGraph and Saron from CodeNewbie) are advocates of Ruby on Rails as a language that’s both simple and powerful, which gives me a good feeling.
Aerial things
My aerial training has been a bit stagnant—I haven’t felt particularly creative, and choreography hasn’t been grabbing me, but on the bright side I’ve been enjoying conditioning and strengthening recently.
Part of me is frustrated but I’m trying to embrace this phase, make the most of it, and look forward to the day I get excited about dancing in the air again!
I’ve also discovered quite a few amazing aerialists recently. One I want to highlight is Erin Ball, whom I found through an episode of The Artist Athlete (my favourite aerial podcast), and who’s a really cool circus performer and a double amputee!
I also started following Teatro La Conspiración on Instagram, a Colombian collective that puts on some really atmospheric and provocative aerial performances! I’m in love with their aesthetic. Warning if you follow the link: NSFW!
That’s all from me this time around—see you in two weeks!