What did you learn today?

Angular! Well sort of. I knew about Angular from CodeSchool classes and from trying to incorporate it into my first JavaScript and visualization project. My first attempt at using Angular in a project didn’t go so well, but I’m happy to report that integrating Angular was much easier this time around. By the end of the day, I had all but one of the test specs passing.

So what exactly is Angular? It’s a delightful MVW (Model, View, Whatever) framework that extends HTML to be more dynamic with data-binding and directives.

Description from Angular.js

HTML is great for declaring static documents, but it falters when we try to use it for declaring dynamic views in web-applications. AngularJS lets you extend HTML vocabulary for your application. The resulting environment is extraordinarily expressive, readable, and quick to develop.

Did you learn anything new about yourself?

I coded alone on a sprint for the first time in 5 weeks, and I had a great time reading resources and figuring out things on my own. I encountered two bugs that I wasn’t sure how to work around, and I approached other pairs in my cohort to assist. I should be more willing to ask for help. I think I haven’t always done that in the past. It’s so much easier to think through a problem and solutions when talking to someone about the problem. Somehow, I’m better equipped to see the problem from a new angle and to find faults in my logic and syntax as I rehash what I’ve already attempted.

Anything you want to do differently tomorrow?

Extra-credit! I’m hoping to pass that last spec tomorrow morning. For the rest of the day, I want to read about form validation, animations, and other angular features.