It's always intimidating [LAUGH] when you start with a blank sheet.
I can't tell you how many times I've gone to start writing some article and
I'm just looking at the blank page and I'm thinking, where do I start?
Do you get that feeling sometimes, Duran,
when you start with something new?
>> Yeah, it's hard.
You have to kind of psych yourself up.
Everyone has their own techniques for just getting moving on a project.
Often you can just start with the things you know, like you're going to use
a model view, some kind of controller thing, so what can you start adding?
If it's a map, maybe you're talking about places,
just finding some place you can start and just start adding things and
then eventually the questions will maybe just come.
But yeah, staring at that blank sheet of paper, as you say,
is definitely difficult.
>> Yeah.
I would say too, kind of just pick one part of the project to figure out first.
Whether it's the list view, whether you want to get the search box working,
whether you want to get parts of the map working.
I would pick one thing, kind of figure out bits and
pieces of it, kind of put that part together.
And also, don't hesitate to kind of step away from the big project and
maybe start just a little sample project where you're like,
I'm really having a hard time figuring out how to sort stuff in my list or
how to get all my markers to have unique info windows.
It's good practice to maybe just say, okay,
I think I've done a lot on my project, I don't want to break what I have,
let me kind of write something up here and just sort of a little side project.
And see if I can get this functionality working and
then figure out how to apply it back to my architecture that I've designed here.
I do that a lot myself.
There's a lot of times where I'm working on a project and
I'm like, I can't figure out how to get this navigation to pop out right.
So I kind of make a little dummy site.
I kind of play around with things.
It's easy for me to do it that way because it's on a much smaller scale,
and I'm less worried about breaking a ton of [LAUGH] stuff in the process or
having to do like 100 git commits or something.
It's definitely useful to take a step back,
look at sort of the smaller problems and knock out some smaller things first.
>> This is the first project where student's aren't really given anything.
[INAUDIBLE] but they don't really any code to begin with, so
all the projects before this they were given some sort of template code or
something to work off of.
And I think just opening up your text editor to just a blank page could be
a little daunting at first, especially for someone who's really new at this.
What kind of advice would you give to somebody who's kind of
faced with this blank page?
>> Well, first I'll tell you that as someone who's been coding for
a long time, I still get writers block from a blank page, right.
>> I do too.
>> Yeah. >> I do too.
>> It's not something that entirely goes away, but
it is something we get better at, right?
If you open up your text editor and there's nothing there,
right, so what do we know should be there?
Well, we definitely need an HTML file.
Without an HTML file, you got nothing, right?
>> [LAUGH] >> So you need an HTML file.
You need all of the basic HTML [INAUDIBLE], right?
Depending on your tools,
you can actually install plug-ins instead of just put all of the doc
type HTML, HTML head, body, all that stuff in there for you.
So that unblankifies the page a little bit, right?
But still, effectively, you don't have any content,
any stuff that you've put on your page, right?
You also need to link up your CSS file probably.
Unless you're making something that's just, I don't know, a proof of concept,
a CSS stylus.
You also need a JavaScript file, at least one.
You also have multiple [INAUDIBLE].
It depends on how you want to organize your code,
but then, where do you go from there?
And I'd suppose if, I can tell you I would do.
I can't really tell, I can't speak for everyone, but
what I would do is I would start by, I wouldn't worry about the styling.
I wouldn't worry about CSS or any of that stuff.
I would just put some divs on the page that represent the different
areas, right.
We know we need a map.
So I don't look at the Google Maps.
But actually even before you that,
I would try to get an idea of how generally to get started with Knockout.
Well, I might even go to the Knockout homepage and
look at the very basic examples and just get their examples of writing, right?
Even though I don't necessarily need a text box that says hello or a but
box says the same thing.
I may not need that, but it gets something on the screen.
And once you have something on the screen,
you can be like, that's right okay, I've got observables,
I've got data binding, a data bind to connect things up.
All right, now my memory is jogged, I'm ready to move forward so
I want to put a list.
All right, so what could I use?
An observable, an observable array.
How do I connect that up, all right, let's look at that example, right,
that's how that works.
So it's not so
much about necessarily going in the right direction right at the start.
It's about getting your bearings and- >> Maybe it's kind of
picking something to begin.
>> Picking something, just go in some direction, right?
>> Yeah.
>> Don't go off the deep end.
Don't start coding in a different framework than you append to,
obviously, but this builds something.
Once you've built something, it'll be so much easier to course correct,
change your course towards where you ultimately end up.
So that's a little bit about how I work.
I don't know, it may not be for everybody but that's been useful for me.