Welcome to travesty.fyi—the portfolio web site for me, Stephen Brooks. This is a place where I’ll showcase my projects, assignments, and growing full-stack web development skills. This web site represents my learning journey in this course.
Full-stack web development encompasses two technologies and the technological threads that bind them. These two technologies are the front-end and the back-end.
The front-end is the suite of technologies that make up the components of a web page (like the page you are visiting now!) visible and to end-users and allow end-users to interact with it. Web pages are often implemented in HTML (Hyper-Text Markup Language), CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), and JavaScript.
HTML allows web designers to establish the structure of the content of our web pages. We can create multiple tiers of headings, create main areas with pertinent information, aside areas with tangential information, areas for advertisements, headers and footers common across all pages of a site, and more!
CSS lets us style the content structured in the HTML. Different parts of a web page can be styled individually. The text and background colors of different areas can be different. Different fonts can be used for headings, main content, lists, etc. Borders can be added to web elements, like images or forms. The possibilities might truly be endless.
JavaScript is the programming language of the front-end of the web! It is actually a powerful language that allow designers to intercept events such as mouse clicks, mouse hover, form submission, text box changes, even timers. JavaScript can be used to realize animations of web content, like sliding image displays. JavaScript enables web pages to be dynamic and feel alive.
The back-end is the suite of technologies on the server side of the web page. Sometimes it is just a simple off-the-shelf HTML web server. But often it is a custom program perhaps written in “node.js”, a common back-end platform based on JavaScript. node.js is what is taught in this course! node.js can dynamically respond to HTTP requests and also parse URLs to figure out how to respond. Neat!
node.js can also interface with databases. This course uses MongoDB, a non-relational database, for storing information outside of a single web browsing session. MongoDB can store images (and other files) and can be used to hold the confidential information like usernames, hashed secret question answers, and hashed passwords.
Well, that's a lot of learning to do so please wish me luck! Thank you for visiting my portfolio site and coming along on this adventure.
My name is Stephen Brooks. I am a student at DMACC (Des Moines Area Community College) in the CIS (Computer Information Systems) program. I am taking a full-stack web development course. This web site is the in-progress portfolio resulting from that class.
I am in the CIS program to gain marketable skills (and credentials!) relevant to the IT world. I love technology in general, though. I was introduced to computers through video games; I always wanted to make my own and learning programming was a necessary step. Through books, I taught myself C and C++. Because games demand high performance, I learned assembly language (for x86 compatible processors). This led to a career in software optimization, taking advantage of advanced vector units and SIMD (single instruction, multiple data) operations in mainstream processors.
I still like to play video games. My favorite game of all-time is “Master of Magic”, released in 1995! It is a game where the player explores randomly generated worlds, populated with lairs and dungeons of treasure guarded by monsters, cities controlled by the game’s AI which must be destroyed or conquered, and a vast list of spells to learn on the way to defeating your enemies.
I also enjoy a game called “Grim Dawn”, released in 2016, which is an ARPG (action RPG). The makers of “Grim Dawn” just released a new expansion, so, from time to time I have been destroying monsters gleefully in the new lands offered in that DLC (downloadable content).
Outside of college and gaming, I love to write choral music! I have written several choral compositions, mainly settings of Bible passages, but also a semi-sacred piece with text attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson. I would love to have my SATB (soprano, alto, tenor, bass) piece with orchestral accompaniment recorded within the next few years.
Attribution: WikiCommons