Week's Progress

I started reading Practicing Rails by Justin Weiss.  Kinda pricey ebook and I'm not convinced it was worth the price so far.

I started working on (and deployed to Heroku) a site for a small machining business.  This is my first solo project I've done without following a tutorial (even though I used my past tutorials as references).

The big features of this project are:

1. Creation of a contact form that emails site owner directly when a visitor sends a contact request.  No database- it is similar to the app I built during the Learn Rails tutorial.  The contact form uses ActiveModel class.
2. Utilized Bootstrap theme template for the design.  This was the first time I've tried to adapt and customize a pre-designed template for a Rails project.  Definitely had its frustrating moments!

Of course, during the process, there were little issues that came up and required troubleshooting, but I got it all fixed and working!

What I learned during this process was that I need to work on planning work and creating sketches of the pages I'm making so I keep myself limited to one task at a time and not spread out and skipping around from task to task.    This mainly happened when I added the bootstrap features and started adding the div classes to each individual view for the bootstrap template design.

Oh, and my github streak is up to 13 days!   My understanding is better of Rails framework.  Thinking of how things go together in MVC is going better for me.  I'm pleased with that.

Goals for next week:

• I'm going to keep reading Practicing Rails.  Try to finish this week.
• Work on a personal website for myself.

Goals for January:

• Hartl's Rail Tutorial!
• Read Easy ActiveRecord for Rails Developers

Tuesday's Progress

I finished Kehoe's Learn Rails Tutorial.  I was able to do the whole thing easily while my spouse was away on a trip.  He's back tomorrow, so I will probably be taking some time off during the holidays to relax, bike, and snowboard. :-)  I have a 9-day streak on GitHub.  woot!

I am happy with my progress so far this month.

Monday's progress.

With technology projects, like many other aspects of life, though it seems you’ll never get it right, and never get it done, there are moments when you can savor a sense of accomplishment. This is one of those moments. -Daniel Kehoe, Learn Rails Tutorial

Sunday's progress:

• Got mailer setup and working.
• Got site deployed to Heroku and working.
• Even though I was getting all this stuff done, troubleshooting and fixing stuff, I felt incredibly overwhelmed and confused again about controllers, views, and models.  
• Felt down because I was confused and felt like I didn't understand anything at all and felt like I hadn't learned anything in the tutorial, but just following instructions.

Today's progress:

• I got a good 4 hours of studying done at the library before it was time to go home and walk/feed the dogs.
• In that time, I re-read much of what I had just done/learned in the Learn Rails tutorial. 
• I googled A LOT.  Learning about RESTful design.  Learning about 'skinny controller, fat model.'  Looking up more about ActiveRecord, ActiveModel, ActionController & Mailer. Looking up about using render vs. redirect_to in the controller methods.
• Reading RubyDocs like "Rails routing from the outside in."
• When I got back home, I finished up the bulk of the tutorial, adding segment.io JS to create analytics via google analytics.  And pushed it to heroku and made sure it was working via checking the real-time analytics tracking.
• I feel a little less completely lost this evening.
• In the past few days, I've read over 250 pages (and re-read most of those) of the Learn Rails tutorial.  I have about 70 more pages to finish.

Saturday night.

coding in bed.

Here's how I spent my Saturday late night.... In bed, working on coding while reading Kehoe's learn rails guide. 

So far, I think I liked one month rails' style better for my learning style, but I'm doing the best I can!  I worked on integrating a contact form into my app using simple_forms and google_drive gems.

Thurs and Friday progress.

Not too much progress, I did some more work in Kehoe's Learn Rails tutorial, but not as much as I hoped for.  I learned more about the conventions in Rails, using Foundations CSS styling (not sure I like it more than Bootstrap, but we'll see as I do more with it), and a little review of basic ruby.  I guess I was hoping to be done with it in 2-3 days.  Only excuse I have is that I've been sick.

I'm hoping to feel better over the weekend, get more work done, and extend my 5 day streak of commits on github :)

I also did the git/brew upgrade to fix the security issue with git.  I swear, I can never have a simple upgrade/install on my machine with the command line.  It always requires going to stack overflow to find solutions to my problem.  I also feel like I try one solution, doesn't work.  so I keep going and randomly trying more and more advice.  I wish I understood what I am doing more on there.  I got Git to update finally, only for my terminal to say the old version # when I checked it.  but if I went to upgrade, it said the new version of git was already installed, wtf?  Luckily with a close/reopen of the terminal window, it was only showing the most recent version install and everything seems to be peachy now.  whew.

I've been feeling like I have no idea what I'm doing the past couple days.  Self-doubt.  Hopefully I'll perk up when I start to feel better.  I don't feel like I've been able to think clearly at all and my learning is stunted.

Learn Rails Tutorial started!

I started Daniel Kehoe's Learn Rails book on Tuesday.  I'm excited to do this tutorial!  I decided to do it before starting Hartl's Rails tutorial to get more practice and because the application I will be building during the book will be suitable for a small business... it includes contact form and mailing list features.  This will be great since the first independent project I'm going to take on is making a new website for my dad's business!

I got through chaper 12, setting up my new project and getting git setup along the way, and then got stuck for hours on the dumbest mistake ever.  I'm pretty embarassed that I wasted my evening on such a silly error.  I was editing my .bashrc file and secrets.yml file in the app to setup environment variables in the bash file so they aren't revealed in the secrets.yml file.  I kept getting one of two errors:  my secret_key_base wasn't defined in the secrets.yml file and an error similar to this one: "ruby/2.1.0/psych.rb:370:in `parse': (<unknown>): could not find expected ':' while scanning a simple key at line 18 column 1 (Psych::SyntaxError)"

After systematically going through replacing variables in secrets.yml file with hard values, checking the multiple bash files on my computer for conflicts (bash_profile, bashrc, profile, zshrc, etc), I finally found the problem and felt so dumb.  When I was opening up my bash files, I was just clicking them in Finder and the default textEdit program for Mac was opening them instead of opening them in my text editor, Atom.  So, the problem was, that the textEdit program was adding formatting that couldn't be interpreted properly by my computer.  DUMB!  Once I went through them and re-did my bashrc file in Atom, it all works!

I could continue to beat myself up for making this mistake, but it is better to laugh at it and learn, and never make it again!

My One Month Rails "Pinteresting" App is finished! Woot!

Over the weekend, I didn't do much coding.  I did make it to the Railsgirl meetup and learned some stuff on JS (specifically Coffeescript) and Associations.

So far this current week, I've been busy working away at my Pinteresting app in One Month Rails.  I've done a ton in the past two days to get it finished!

• Utilized the jQuery Masonry gem so that images move around (with transitions) to fit the page width.  Oh... did I mention that since I built it with bootstrap, it will look great on tablets and mobile devices? ;-)
• Updated styling for displaying single pins on a page.
• Added Edit, Delete, and Back icon using bootstrap's Glyphicons.
• Changed up the root route so that all pins are displayed on homepage.
• Updated pins controller to change how the pins are ordered.
• Added pagination using will_paginate gem and limited number of pins displayed on a page to 8.
• Added user names and subsequent validations.
• Yay!

I started it less than 2 weeks ago and I can't believe that I've finished it.  I've learned a lot and can't wait to start the next RoR project (Hartl's Rails Tutorial)! Edit:  I've decided to do Daniel Kehoe's Learn Ruby on Rails first.  In that I will make a web app suitable for a small business, which will be great, since I want to do this for my dad's biz!  I want to redo my dad's business's website.  It's in terrible shape and needs help, and then I can also add it to my portfolio.

Of course, the Pinteresting app didn't always go smoothly and I used google and stack overflow to troubleshoot and fix problems.  My last issue was relating to a precompiling issue in my production environment.  After I finished the build today, I went back and jazzed up the css styling.  I added a background image to the jumbotron on the main page.  It was looking fine in development on my local host, but in production on heroku, it wasn't showing up and was giving a 404 not found error for the image.  I looked on stack overflow and found that others have had this issue too!  I followed some advice and it works now!

So freaking proud of myself!

Snazzy.

Thursday and Friday's progress!

I really immersed myself in the One Month Rails course for the past 2 days.  In the course, I am making a pinterest style app.  Here's what I've accomplished during the last 2 days:

• I got through setting up users with the devise gem and migrating everything successfully to Heroku.
• I styled the new user sign up and log in pages using Bootstrap 3.
• I then worked on generating the pin scaffold and connecting pins to users.
• I set up user authorizations so pins couldn't be deleted or changed by anyone other than the user that set them up.  And pins can only be seen by logged in users.
• I installed the Paperclip gem and added the ability to upload and edit images on the pins.
• Whew.

I'm on Day 25 of the curriculum, ~72% through the course.  Feeling really good with my progress.  I'm not just trying to blast through the videos and mindlessly do the actions.  I am taking thorough notes and really trying to understand everything.  I am a little shaky on understanding the migrations (how do we know what to type into those exactly to get the desired elements added to our database correctly?) and the methods in the controllers, but I know the more I do it, the more I'll understand.

Here's how it is shaping up...

Editing a pin - Can add an image and description.  Clean formatting thanks to Bootstrap 3.

Here's a saved pin with image and description!

Not sure how much I will work on it this weekend.  I am anxious to continue, but also like to spend time with my partner.  I may be away most of tomorrow on a trip and Sunday is the RailsGirls meetup.

Progress update: 10.12.14... I am loving One Month Rails so far!

Things are going a little slow, but well!

I've been continuing with my One Month Rails project.  I really like it so far.  I have been working on adding Bootstrap elements and customizing the look of my app so far.

I added a NavBar and fixed up the layout and colors to look nicer.

Looking good!

And the big achievement today.... I got my app online with Heroku! It's live!  I have a few issues I need to fix/understand.  Heroku warned me to specify my Ruby version as best practices but there are 2 issues with doing this.  First, I have built the app using Ruby 2.1.4 but it says to specify 2.0.0 in the gemfile.  If I do this, it messes up RVM and ability to run rails server (doesn't show the rails gem at all).  I'm confused and I've reached out to the teachers at OMR for a little guidance.  In the meantime, I removed the ruby version specification so I don't have any issues running locally for now.  Updated:  I fixed it!  I needed to do a bundle install and I cleared it up and the gemfile is now specified for Ruby 2.1.4.  If in doubt, always bundle install. :-]

I also had an issue with my google font not working on Heroku, but a quick search on stackoverflow and I fixed that issue and pushed the update to heroku.

Also... I got the files setup on my computer for the next RailsGirls meetup on Sunday and took a look at the this Git/Github tutorial, although it is very similar to the one in the One Month Rails videos, so it was  review, but I'm getting more comfortable with using Git and use it often.

I couldn't stay away.... and I worked on it some more tonight and got the Devise gem installed and I am ready to start generating users to my site tomorrow!  Wheee!

I feel like today, I accomplished a lot.  :-]

Monday's progress

I continued and got through the day 9 material (I'm on day 3) of my One Month Rails pinteresting project.

I made this progress today:

1. Created a new page.
• Added new action for the new page in the controller folder
• Created the new page's HTML in the view folder
• Added the new page's route to the config/routes.rb file
2. Learned a little more about embedded ruby.
3. Created navigation links in my layout.
4. Installed the Bootstrap-sass gem, updated the gemlist, and added a SCSS file to utilize it.  Whee!  I love bootstrap.
5. And.... did the Git "dance" (stage/commit/push) several times all through all these updates to my project.

Progress Update for last friday and the weekend....

Last Friday:

• Worked through Day 2 - 6 of One Month Rails tutorial.  I created my new project folder in rails, created a new home page, & setup the new root path in routes.rb file.  
• I did get bogged down a bit with section on Git.  The tutorial was spot on, no problems with it, but I decided to go back into a project that I had already added to github but hadn't tracked in git locally and made a mess of it!  After tooling around for an 1.5 hr I finally got it sorted.  And, in the process, I went through a couple of git tutorials and lots of searching on stackoverflow.
• Also, in browsing twitter feed, I found out about Meteor and started looking into it.  It seems really cool and I want to check it out further.  I dl'd it and started going through their intro tutorial before I got too tired to concentrate anymore for the night.  Will look at it again soon.

The Weekend:

• No progress made.  I took the weekend off.  I spent time with my partner.  On Sunday, we took the train down to Brussels, Belgium to go to the big Christmas market there.

Brussels!

Getting into a weekly routine.

Lately, I'm trying to establish a good weekday routine.  I like working at home, but feel less productive here and more distracted with the dogs around.

These two can be very distracting to have around.

So, I've been biking down to the main library.  I like it there.  Usually pretty peaceful.  I can get a solid block of time of studying in every day.  Only thing that I dislike is that bathroom isn't free to use!  But, still cheaper than going to coffee shop.  I make my own coffee and bring it with me.

Today, I finished up RubyMonk as best as I could.  I got through all the lessons/exercises and finished all the problems except for 3 of the 16.  I'm like 96% done.  I'm just stuck on a couple and staring at them does not help me understand them better.  I'm not giving up on them or Pine's Learn to Program book, just taking a little break from them and will come back to them when I get a little more experience under my belt.

I'm very itchy to do something more tangible with my coding than these CS brain teaser coding challenges I've been doing... I want to really build my first application!  So, I went ahead and signed up for One Month Rails.  I found a discount code and it was only $74 instead of $99.  Very,  very excited about this!  I went through the day 1 lessons tonight and will soldier on with this tomorrow.  If anyone is interested, here is a link to the discounted price.

I can't believe I've been coding for 3 weeks.  I'm looking forward to see what my progress brings in the rest of this month.

Monday's Progress

Slow progress.  I'm now in chapter 10 of Chris Pine's Learn to Program and I'm hitting the dreaded steep learning curve that I've seen mentioned in reviews of the book.  Exercises and topics are getting harder as the tasks require more complex solutions.  Currently I'm letting my brain recover from learning about recursion.

So, slow progress today.  Instead of getting frustrated, I took a break and looked at the Odin Project - seems like another great learning resource - and started going through some of its tutorials/readings to give my brain a rest from Ruby. I tried to talk through some stuff with my spouse, but I sometimes think it's difficult for him to explain things and think through questions like I need him to since he *gets it* and I don't get it yet.  I'm going to look at the epicodus Ruby coursework and some other online resources to find out more info on working through these lessons on recursion.

I finished off today by reading some inspirational coding blog posts like these one:

• Things I Wish Someone Had Told Me When I Was Learning How to Code
• Don’t Believe Anyone Who Tells You Learning To Code Is Easy

I find it's best for me when I don't get something is to step away and let my brain think about it offline for a little bit.  Then, come in fresh and usually I can then understand things clearer.

Sunday's Progress

We went to my first RailsGirls meetup in a nearby town.  It was a presentation over MVC and HTML/CSS.  I'm slowing wrapping my brain around the idea of MVC.  I'm glad Josh could go with me.  Glad coding processes/design overlap so that he can explain things to me even though RoR is foreign to him as a C#/.NET programmer.

Looked at Learn to Program a little when I got home.  I got through another exercise in the book.  Tired.

I just found out that there is a group planning a Dev Bootcamp in Amsterdam.  Very excited and interested in this!  I hope it is (a) coming up soon and (b) that the tuition will be affordable.  It would be an amazing opportunity.

Looking forward to starting fresh this week.

Last couple days progress!

Still working through Chris Pine's Learn to Program...

I got through chapters 7-9, even going back to re-do and practice exercises over again.  I want to make sure everything is sinking in into my head well.

I got RailsGirls app setup on my system and ready for the meetup tomorrow.

Wednesday's progress.

• Did 16 lessons of Git Immersion today.  Getting my feet wet with Git!
• Finished Chapter 6 of Chris Pine's Learn to Program tonight.  I am doing all the exercises as I go along.

Tuesday 11/25...

Went through a couple more Epicodus exercises, but got stuck on some of the exercises.  I got through the leap year exercise, learning how to use chai.js and mocha.js for writing and testing specs and then refractoring my code.

Learning to use Chai.JS and Mocha.JS for spec testing in BDD.

But on the following independent exercises, I felt too challenged without any support - I know the online course is drawn from the in-class materials and I felt without the in-class support, the independent assignments were a good bit above the examples that were illustrated.

So...I'm really proud of my progress in HTML, CSS, and JS over the last 2 weeks, but.... instead of spending a lot of time to figure out javascript challenge exercises on my own, I'm going to go ahead and switch gears to Ruby.  Getting into Ruby and Ruby on Rails is my real goal, so I'm going for it.  The basis of knowledge I learned in these other languages will be useful and help me move quickly into learning the new.

I started reading Chris Pine's Learn to Program book.  I read the first 4 or so chapters tonight.  Reads well and easy to understand.  I'm hoping to get through most of the book this week.

Ping Pong Test (aka FizzBuzz Test)

I figured out the ping pong test!  Feeling good with my progress.  Oddly, I got the loops and if/else if statements figured out pretty quick, but what tripped me up the most was figuring out how to get my integers listed properly into my bulleted list.  The solution was so easy once I got that bit finally fixed in my head!

My final solution. 

Here's more info on the Ping Pong test (aka Fizz Buzz), apparently it's a popular interview question:  Why Can't Programmers.. Program?  Really...199 out of 200 programmers can't figure it out?  Maybe my odds are better than I thought then? :-)

I also did a couple lessons on BDD/TDD process.  Happy with today's progress.

Weekend Progress.

Finished up lessons on looping w/ forEach and for loops.  Got a little stuck on one of the looping exercises:

• Go back to your page where it would pop up an alert every time you clicked an element and say what kind of tag it was. Refactor your JavaScript for this page to use a loop.

But I slept on it last night and figured out the solution in only a couple minutes this morning!  Whee!  Then finished up the section on debugging, luckily already practicing some of these techniques in my practice exercises.

Tomorrow I will do the next exercise, the Ping-Pong challenge, and then dive into behavior driven development (BDD)!  Yay!

Friday 11/21

Not too much progress today.  Just very fatigued and brain fog, that made it hard to follow/think through new concepts.  I had to keep watching and watching clips again for anything to sink in.  Oh well, everyone has their off days.

I did get through the introduction of arrays and looping in javascript.  Getting closer to closer to the section on Ruby.

I'm feeling reasonable about the progress I've made this week.

Thursday, 11/20

Another day, more time spent learning/practicing on jQuery.

Learning about branching, if/else criteria, truthy/falsey... Watching epicodus lessons and working through the coding exercises.

Wednesday of Week 2...

Working through more jQuery slowly today.  Spent a good bit of time really working through the practice exercises and understanding how to think through and setup a solution to a task.  Feeling a bit more comfortable.  Hoping this feeling continues....

Tuesday's progress

Progression slowed down today.  I need time to process the jQuery I'm learning in the Epicodus course.  I need it to sink in really well.  I did a lot of studying of new stuff I've learned in a couple lessons today on other sites.  I'm really trying to fully understand how to setup several methods  within the js file.  A little frustrated about how many little errors I make, then I have to go back and debug the code... but I guess that is a good thing to deal with early on... I find my mistakes and then curse myself for these errors!

Monday's Progress!

Today's progress:

• Finished up the HTML/CSS section on Epicodus.
• Played around with Bootstrap some more.  I like it.  
• I think I'm going to surprise my folks and redesign their company's (poorly done) website using a nice bootstrap theme.
• Learned basics of javascript (variables, strings, methods, functions).
• Started the section on jQuery.
• Downloaded jQuery 1.11.1
• Setup a virtual Ruby on Rails environment on nitrous.io and invited my husband/mentor to join me.  So now I have it on my Macbook and a virtual option.
• Skipped ahead in the Epicodus course to the start of Ruby on Rails section.  Tried the IRB command and although I could input, but I initially got a error about Headline file missing.  So... I went into crafty IT troubleshoot mode and successfully figured that out and reinstalled RVM and got that error GONE!   (It only took 2 different attempts before success! :-] )
• I also emailed the nearest RailsGirls meetup group to see if I could join the next beginner class in their series or if I would be totally lost.  I'm going to try to make it over there to that meetup later this month!

Sunday.

Went through the Epicodus video course some more, almost done with first section on HTML/CSS.  

I learned about applying Bootstrap styles and specificity of CSS classes.

Next section is on javascript.  Looking forward to it!

I'm feeling good about my first week of this adventure.

My goals for my second week are:

• Continue through the Epicodus course, getting through at least the next section on javascript.
• Starting playing around on the Ruby4kids website.
• Review command line terminology again.

Saturday's Progress

I played around with making changes to my blog.

I added the navbar, title image, and formatting. I like the style better now, but want to learn to do more, and will be continuing to make changes improvements.

Google search is definitely my friend in making the changes!  Getting more comfortable playing around with the HTML and CSS.

Friday's progress.

I worked through a couple more CSC python course problems, and I'm on exercise set 8.  I feel like I will work on these as I need a break with other things I'm working on.  There isn't an answer sheet, so when I get stuck, I do best if I do something else and come back fresh to a problem.

I'm doing some more of the Epicodus course.  I want to get through the first section on HTML/CSS in the next day or so.

I also started and finished reading "learning the command line the hard way" today.  After the frustrations of figuring out the RVM/RoR install yesterday, this is important to get more comfortable with.  I'm going to work on memorizing the most useful commands that the author recommends to learn.  The crash course was great and easy to understand!  Recommended.

XCode, HomeBrew, RVM, Ruby, Rails.... wheee!

Set up my dev environment today.  Wow, was that frustrating!

I had a slew of error messages but luckily with googling, stackoverflow, and some uninstalling/reinstalling Xcode and RVM and updating OpenSSL, I finally got everything installed by following the RailApps Tutorial.  Whew.  I am learning about how to use a Mac (long-time PC user until a year ago when Win8 changed my mind) alongside learning how to be a developer!

Glad I accomplished this today, I was so disappointed this morning when I was trying to figure it out and I kept getting 3 different error messages.  This took me most of the day to figure out and finish the install, but it's done and working as far as I know!

Day 3 Progress Update

I continued some exercises on the UWaterloo Computer Science Circles Python Tutorial, but then their website was unresponsive, so I am switching gears and started some video lessons on Epicodus.  I'm excited to learn HTML/CSS and hopefully can update my blog to reflect what I learn.  I'm not keen on the stock formats!

I installed the recommended text editor Atom instead of Sublime Text, since it is free and recommended by Epicodus.

I went through 5 or so lessons of Epicodus today.  I then switched gears and looked at setting up my dev enviro for Ruby on Rails.  I looked at the Ruby4kids site, then tried the tryruby short interactive tutorial.  I then got frustrated figuring out how to get darn Ruby on my Mac w/OSX Yosemite 10.10.  I guess I'm dumb and thought the install would be straight-forward.  I finally googled and found some step by step instructions and will hopefully get that set up tomorrow!

Day 2 of a New [Scary?] Journey.

Am I really doing this?  This wouldn't be the first time I've attempted a career change...  and it would certainly be less expensive (no expensive masters program this time) if I focus on self-study and do affordable online courses to supplement my free training resources.

It's scarier this time around.  I'm older (early 30s) and leaving my established career field.  My background is chemistry.  I've worked for 7 years as an analytical chemist in pharmaceuticals....(this includes a year gap where I went back to college to get a Masters in Teaching, but could not find a job as a middle school science teacher afterwards, so I went back into the lab.)

This year, I moved with my partner to the Netherlands from the US.  This was a dream fulfilled for us and one we made happen by taking a huge chance: selling everything, quitting jobs, and moving to Germany to find work.  Luckily he successfully found a great job in the Netherlands.

I'd like to think I'm a bright, inquisitive, tenacious problem-solving chemist... which hopefully my scientific mindset will transfer over and be beneficial in learning to code.

Here's the things I think I have going in my favor to be successful:

• My partner is a senior level C#/.NET developer who knows front-/backend and middleware.  He will be my mentor.  Even though he is not familiar with RoR, he knows a lot of other languages, knows how to set up a dev enviro, etc, so he is a resource.  He is going to learn RoR along with me so he can help and we can collaborated on projects when I get to that level.
• I can devote a full-time job's level of time commitment to learning.  I am not employed.
• I have a background in not only science, but QC.  That means I'm used to things having to be done exactly a certain way so that they are credible and analyses go as planned with intended results.  I'm used to attention to detail to a ridiculous degree.  I am also flexible and adept to troubleshooting and working through problems.
• There are a ton of online resources for training.
• There is a RailsGirls meetup group in nearby Utrecht, NL.   There is a frontend meetup group in Amsterdam, NL.  Both of these cities aren't too far by train.  The meetings are in English too.

I am starting this blog on the advice in the posts of Josh Kemp who was able to go from beginner to a full-time, employed RoR developer in ~9 months.  I am mainly blogging to hold myself accountable, rather than for self-promotion at this point.

My goal (7 months?) is to become proficient enough I can find an paid internship or junior level position.  I want to learn RoR and HTML/CSS.

Here's my gameplan for the rest of November...

1. Finish the Computer Sciences Circles intro to programming/Python course.  I started this course a day ago, when I was looking into the 1-yr BS degree in CS from OSU and they recommended trying it out.  I want to finish since I've started.  I'm on exercise 7C currently.
2. Set up my development environment for RoR with the help of my mentor.
3. Read Zed Shaw’s "Learn the Command Line the Hard Way"
4. Pick one of these courses and start it:
1. The Odin Project
2. One Month Rails
3. Epicodus free online course

Back to studying....