# Reflections through Week 7

## Was the project harder or easier than you expected?
My first project was harder than I expected, and I attribute that largely to my overestimation of what I could accomplish. My ambition far exceeded my capabilities, and once I had the layout locked down with placeholder sections in place, I wasn’t able to progress as much as I wanted just because I didn't yet know how to do what I wanted to do.

In fact, I spent so much time trying (and failing) to figure out how to add more complex elements to my version one, my version two turned out inferior. When I would try to add something, it would mess up my formatting across sections. I spent more time trying to troubleshoot my code than achieving more modest, incremental goals.


## What have been the most difficult obstacles you've encountered so far?
So far, the most difficult challenge I’ve encountered has been trying to maintain what I have learned with the new elements we add each week. I will forget basic formatting rules for HTML or CSS functions and will have to constantly refer back to previous lessons. Reference guides and code sites have been super helpful, but it’s also tempting to add more complex code from these sites that I don’t fully understand, which has pretty uniformly ended in disaster for my code.

Also, my first encounter with javascript in the FreeCodeCamp lessons was super confusing for me. I didn’t have the broader context for the more specific things we were doing in the lessons, so javascript was intimidating from the start. I’m planning on taking the LinkedIn Learning javascript essentials course to fill in the contextual gaps, but I will say the doodle this week really helped me begin to understand the logic behind what javascript can be used to do.


## Do you find that you like programming? Why or why not?
I was surprised to discover that I actually like the process of coding. I enjoy the types of thinking that planning out a website requires, and seeing my plan take shape on the screen is really satisfying. Although I am a mid-career learning professional who most likely won’t be switching careers to web development, understanding how code works and what’s involved in building apps or developing websites will be helpful for me as a product owner as I lead my team through eLearning modernization initiatives.

As a side project (more of a hobby), I have also been working on developing the framework for a persona-based social learning platform and what I’m learning here will help me build out web page mock-ups for the overall look and design. This will be the focus of my integrative project. In fact, I think that will be my concentration for the final project -- a sample page detailing a social node within a specific learning path. I just need to make sure I am not re-committing my first mistake, and that it’s something I feel confident that I can complete.