We’ve been learning how to use Haml. My understanding of it is that it is basically a shorthand for HTML. I’ve done a bit of work in it now and I have to say that I don’t like it. The shorthand used in Haml is nowhere near as fast as the shorthand available in Emmet/Zen Coding. Haml is supposed to be easier to read. I find that to be true in some circumstances, but not at all in others.

To me, it feels like Haml was a syntax that was created for the sole purpose of creating a syntax. Am I missing something major here?

I’m starting this site to keep track of my progress in learning to become a developer and also serve as a portfolio. I wanted to get this going quickly and I intend for the design to be one of my projects and it may be tweaked regularly over time.

Currently, I’m approaching two weeks in at Nashville Software School. I have a lot of experience with HTML and CSS as a hobbyist, as well as having a little experience in many other languages. The first two weeks have largely been HTML/CSS, so it hasn’t been difficult. So far, it has been fine tuning my skills, as well as getting into the groove of writing code and working with others. I’m learning how to use Git/GitHub, which I’ve needed to do for quite some time.

As of yesterday, we started working on Sass. I was really excited about this, since I saw the power it offers in the Assembling Sass course on CodeSchool. We went on to use it to mimic Awwwards.com and I spent a lot of time working on getting the vote circles (near the center) to work properly using Sass and HTML only. I don’t have the opening animation and it doesn’t work for anything that would be less than 50%, but it was a pretty big achievement that used a lot of the power of Sass (namely @each loops and nested lists). It’s still incomplete and not pretty, but you can see it in my GitHub account.