First Assignment

When I started my P2PU course, I was asked to take a survey on my expertise in HTML, CSS, Javascript and jQuery. I responded with a descending order of skill, having actually learned them in that order. Our clever instructor not only used this for placement in our workgroups, but turned around and threw it all into a javascript array for use on our first assignment, something like this.

There's four groups in our course, and the source file has the results from all four groups as well as a master of everyone. Our assignment was to use a jQuery plugin by Keith Wood for Google Chart Tool to take the data from our surveys and make a pretty graph of our choice. The point was to bone up on pure Javascript while utilizing a pretty jQuery plugin for the fun.

If you haven't heard of jsFiddle, check it out. Like a successor to pastebin, jsFiddle lets you throw some code into your terminal and goof around with the result. It's got a spot for HTML, CSS, Javascript, and an output, plus the capability to load external libraries like jQuery or MooTools, or even your own source files. You can save your fiddles, share them, keep different revisions, and fork them to or from others to share and learn. Way cool. Plus, you can embed into your blog:

We were given a starting example from which to draw inspiration, and I chose my design goals as follows:

• Instead of a bar graph, have four pie charts for each technology, and display expertise for group 1 only (my group).
• Apply Javascript Code Conventions as per Douglas Crockford, the most challenging of which was to minimize global variable use by using Objects to store and manipulate data.
• Use a Geek Squad colour theme! Yea! Baum!

I got a little over my head iterating over the source data at one point. The most challenging and rewarding part of programming for me (so far) has been embracing "less is more" and trying to minimize code while maximizing functionality. It's like an art. A nerdy, unappreciated art. However, one of the coolest things I learned from this was having to deal with someone else's code. The source data file was not exactly ordered or organized how I would have initially thought to do it, so I had to modify my code to accommodate it. I should probably get used to that.

Nonetheless, a pretty fun assignment. The jQuery plugin is pretty cool, though it's a tad slow. There was a discussion in our forums about whether the jQuery object should be overloaded with this kind of functionality or not. I'm not quite ready to make that judgement, so for now, I'll just use it.