New day new possibilities.
I've been studying web development with Udacity.com since last November and am in the home stretch. After building a mock static page, manipulating the DOM with javascript, building a Frogger game clone and designing a pizza website to optimize to the utmost speed I am now building a SPA, single page application, that incorporates Google Maps API and other third party APIs to highlight locations in a specific neighborhood, and another project incorporating Jasmine JS's error-checking/testing framework.
The Google Maps API has required learning a new library (Knockout JS and jQuery) and reading the documentation to comprehension to implementation. Knockout uses a MVVM (Model View ViewModel) framework that separates the Model from the ViewModel. The View is the UI (User Interface). Knockout's model creates an octopus hub where the Model and ViewModel never interact with each other directly but speak through a hub via data-binding and applyBindings commands.
When I'm in the thick of programming and struggling through the solutions to my quandaries it helps to remind myself of how far I've come, and how much html, css and javascript I am now able to code. The ability to learn is a beautiful thing. The "ah-ha" moments make every struggle worthwhile. And I hope a rewarding career full of new possibilities awaits me just a little further along in the journey.