Build This Button in CSS Challenge

Today we were given the the challenge to build this button
using just CSS. We first did one of our own then we were split into two teams where we were challenged to build it as a team. When doing my own I first thought it would be difficult because we were not allowed to modify the html. So I decided to do a search on how to use CSS to create buttons. One website showed how I could use display block within my anchor element selector to create a block, so I used that. Then I used properties like font-size, color, height, width etc. to get my block to look similar to the original block. I got stuck on making multiple blocks, so I did a web search again and found that to do this I needed to create two block shadows like so box-shadow: 0 0 0 3px #888888, 0 0 0 6px #000;. That worked, but it didn't really give me the desired effect.  When we started the team challenge my button was not complete, but there were others on my team who had completed theirs. When looking at my team members code I saw some things that I could have done differently. Since we could not touch the html I could have used text-transform to make all of the letter capital. I could have used 4 different box shadows. In the code the team used each line was to show each of the margins.  I also learned that you can use CSS symbols to get those stars to appear.
This is the type of question that is asked in interviews. Now that I have tried this on my own and now know the solution. I would attempt to do this differently. I would first figure out what type of block I would need then I would look at the code to see how many margins I would need. I think that once I am able to figure those out then the rest will be easier for me.

Inject method

I found this really cool video on how the inject method works

| |= and &&=

I decided to post on the | |=(or equals) because I saw it recently in another student's code and I had never seen it before. Here is an example:

Line 2 is saying that if a is nil set it to 9. Now a becomes 9. Line 3 is saying that if a is nil set it to 6 since a is now 9 nothing is done. Another one I stumbled upon when researching | |= is &&=. &&= is the opposite of | |=. Here is an example:

Line 2 is saying that if a is not nil set it to nil. In this case a becomes nil.  Line 3 is saying that if a is not nil set it to 25. Because a is nil nothing is done. 

REXML and Nokogiri

When I started working on the Economics XML challenge I didn't realize that REXML and Nokigiri were both parsers that do the same things, but there are some differences, so I decided to the a post on a few. REXML is a parser that is already built into Ruby while we have to install a gem to use Nokogiri. REXML is also an older and slower parser, so many prefer to use Nokogiri. In REXML in order to access nodes it uses XPath which is a language for selecting nodes from an XML document, the match method, and the attributes method all used to access elements or nodes in an XML or HTML file while in Nokogiri the only method necessary to access elements is search and the tag name. Here is an interesting tutorial I found on scraping with Nokogiri

Faith

I found the article really interesting. I enjoy being at the Flatiron School, but I sometimes find myself frustrated because I am struggling a bit. I compare myself to my classmates who are all doing so well and who came from such accomplished backgrounds that  I  sometimes feel like I'm not supposed to be here. Of course I know better but those thoughts do cross my mind. The article gives me hope that I will one day become a good programmer. Just because I may not be a great programmer right now doesn't mean I will never be. I just need to have faith and to continue to stick with. It's ok to fail because many have, but continued on to become good developers. The article also mentions knowing what it is you want to code. I'm excited about that because I've never really thought about what type of programs I would like to build. Maybe thinking about things like that will make this process easier for me. I will try anything.