A New Career, Many New Opportunities
- What excites you about coding? How do you think it can change the world?
With almost a decade of professional experience under my belt, a successful track record of SaaS sales, customer support, client representation, and business management, and a better understanding of myself, my young family, and my goals, becoming a full-stack web developer gives me a feeling of excitement that I haven’t had about a career before. Through the previously mentioned decade, I’ve gathered significant experience with software and software design. I’ve used that software to provide a fantastic service to non-profit organizations throughout Texas. If there’s one thing I could change about my responsibilities in that position, it would be my inability to implement changes that would better our product offering, to be in true control over the company’s fate (very long story behind this one!).
With a world upside down due to Covid-19, I’ve been given a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take a step back from the grueling pace of my previous job and reassess what I want out of a career, out of life. I want control over my career and my opportunities and the way I’ve chosen to regain that control is through web development. I’m am more excited than ever to combine my strengths of business management and software design with a newfound understanding of web development to offer cutting-edge software solutions to non-profits looking to fundraise in a modern world. Of course, I’d love to grab the attention of Google, Amazon, or even Whole Planet Foundation (that last one was pretty specific) for some professional experience along the way!
Full-stack web development is, for me, not a career in itself but a paramount tool to add to my arsenal that I will be bringing to my next position and down the line, my own company.
2. What does doctype do at the top of your html file? Why does this need to be specified?
Doctype is a simple declaration to the browser stating the version of html the file is written in. This allows the browser to properly read and use the included code.
3. Explain how a browser determines what HTML elements match a CSS selector?
Browsers read CSS selectors from right to left. This is the browser attempting to quickly specify an element or class and narrow down the candidates into an efficient list, that way it has a whole lot less information to sift through to match the selector. Less information to load, more efficient code.
4. What is the difference between an HTML element and an HTML tag?
An HTML element represents a component of an HTML document. The HTML tag, whether self closing or start tag and end tag, show where an element begins and ends.
5. In your own words, explain the Cascade of CSS.
The Cascade of CSS takes a list of many elements, each with their properties and declared values, assigns values to the rules, and, when two or more rules tie, digs into lower-priority attributes to determine the rule that will be applied to the element. The source of the rules is also considered such as origin and importance, selector specificity, order of appearance, and initial and inherited properties.
6. Explain, to someone you know, the 3 ways to link/use CSS in an HTML file to style a web page.
a. Inline — The first type is by including the styles in your html text. This can become very inefficient as you will need to repeat style anywhere you want it to be used. An example is <h1 style=“color:green;”>A green title</h1>
b. Internal — In the head section of your html file, you can list individual styles in a style element <style></style>. These will apply to all of the instances of the elements you indicate with a style.
c. External — In the head section of your html file, link the external css file through a link element. <link rel=“stylesheet” href=“styles.css”>. Note, “styles.css” can have a different name but must end in the .css format.