Learning Portfolio Menu
This class focused on several important languages used in Internet application development - HTML, CSS, Bootstrap, PHP, MySQL, and JavaScript. Individually, each of these languages has their own strengths and functionalities, but all can be used in cooperation together to create more powerful websites and manipulate databases. Each module was able to relate to the last - PHP interacts with HTML in order to make dymamic forms and interactive webpages, and PHP can process code to output HTML. MySQL interacts with PHP because PHPMyAdmin, a powerful tool used to handle administration of MySQL to work on databases, is written in PHP. JavaScript can be used with HTML and CSS to process code within the browser, allowing for powerful site functionality not allowed by only using HTML and CSS on their own. All of these languages come together to demonstrate the power of internet applications and the different functionalities that can be achieved by using the languages both individually and together.
Furthermore, this class gave an important introduction to database manipulation. A database on its own is simply a collection of information, but being able to learn how to create, edit, order, manipulate, and interact with this information is what gives them their utility.
Codecademy and interactive YouTube tutorials, such as Eli's PHP and Bucky's MySQL videos, were the most useful for me. Codecademy is a very well-designed website that will allow you to see what mistakes you're making in your code as you write it, and does an excellent job of fully explaining each concept and why those concepts are important to learning the language as a whole. Additionally, each lesson culminating in some sort of application was a good way to get a "real world" example of why each assignment was important.
Eli and Bucky's tutorials gave a lot of depth to the topics they were talking about, and them demonstrating code that I could work along with was a good way to accurately learn all of the material they were presenting. Downloading Bucky's database information to manipulate in my own HostGator database was especially useful as I could ensure I was getting the exact right results as I worked alongside his videos.
I felt as if the JavaScript lessons were a little light, and would have liked to learn more about what type of functionality they can add to webpages that simple HTML, CSS, or PHP cannot. JavaScript is considered one of the three core technologies of World Wide Web content, and while I felt as if I got a good idea of what functionalities HTML and CSS provide, all I know about JavaScript is that it can do "more". Getting a bit more in-depth to this functionality probably would have helped me to understand its importance to web development a bit more.
I used HTML for the vast majority of my portfolio, and would have liked to incorporate more CSS, PHP, and JavaScript into the respective lessons as a demonstration of what I have learned. While I'm still pleased with the outcome of this portfolio and am satisfied with its appearance, I think incorporating these languages would have given the website more functionality and would have better represented what I learned throughout the semester in this course.
Overall, I feel very happy about how much I learned about so many different topics and languages, given the short amount of time in this semester. Professor Crowley provided a wonderful variety of lessons, references, and resources in order to help learn about each topic. I went into this course with rusty knowledge of HTML and CSS, and came out with an expanded knowledge of not only these languages, but so much more. I will be starting an internship next year that will involve working on databases using MySQL, and through what I have learned in this course about MySQL, I am feeling well prepared for it. I look forward to learning even more about these languages and more in the future, and am grateful the opportunity I have been provided in taking this course.