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Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Week 3 of internship...

I'm in the third week of my apprenticeship.  I'm getting used to the commute every day back and forth to Amsterdam.  It's getting better... I'm coming home with more energy.  In the morning, people are so stressed out.  I try to stay out of others way, I don't care about pushing through everyone to get some specific seat on the train/etc.  I try to stay calm, not sweat stuff, and I usually study dutch on my phone using the Memrise app.  In the 3 weeks I've been commuting, I've learned ~375 dutch words using the app.  It's a great way to work on learning vocabulary every day with minimal effort.

Mondays are still the worst since I have the dutch course in the evening, but I'm managing.  I've even had energy the last 2 evenings to get back into doing yoga when I get home!  Very happy about that.  With the daylight increasing incremently everyday, I'm hopeful I can start going out for evening jogs a couple times during the week once it stays light enough for me to feel comfortable doing so.

I've pretty much finished up the bloccit app in the bloc foundations course.  I've started getting my feet wet with real project work with some (very) small testing tasks to work on.  I even did my first pull request for a real project today.

Tuesday, February 17, 2015

Tuesday update

I'm in the second week of my internship.  I am following along the bloc.io coursework, on the first part of the program - foundations - where you do some ruby coursework, then dive into a tutorial (with varying levels of help given) to make a reddit clone with images, avatars, deep nesting, etc.  It's supposed to take 4 weeks to complete, but I'm already at lesson 41 of the 52 after 1.5 weeks.  The coursework is good, I'm hoping to finish it this week... so I'd finish the 4 week project in 1/2 the time.  I'm working 36 hrs a week + a 3 hr roundtrip commute each day.  If that daily commute itself doesn't show I'm committed, I'm not sure what will.

Tuesday, February 10, 2015

Tuesday Update

Started my internship on Monday!  I'm basically following the bloc.io program.  I started on the foundations unit of the bloc.io program and I'm going through each lesson and exercises.  I'm on exercise 18.  Right now going over Ruby concepts/OOP, then will move into Rails.  The lessons are going well since I've been studying these concepts on my own over the past couple months.  The commute to/from Amsterdam and Den Haag isn't the most fun, but I will manage.  We plan to move to A'dam this spring/summer, so I'm not too bothered about it right now, except that it is expensive!  Dogs are managing being alone all day for the past 2 days, so hopefully they will continue to do well with it.  Mondays are definitely going to be rough long days, since I have a Dutch course in the evening and I don't get home until after 10pm.

I've been working so hard lately on teaching myself to code and picking up a new language and frankly, it's the most exhausting period of my life right now.  I don't think I've studied as many hours as I do now even when I was in college or doing my Masters degree!  I'm focused and I'm willing to suffer through lack of sleep and such to get this new career and make our lives better for the both of us.  I'm so happy to have a husband who notices and appreciates.  He randomly sent me an awesome little pep talk today re: learning to program and learning Dutch:
I know you've done everything possible to get to where you are in Ruby and in Dutch in a really short timeframe.  And no matter what anyone else says, and no matter how anyone treats you, you can know that you are putting the effort in, and you've accomplished so much.  I'm more and more impressed every day.  Honestly, you've given me renewed drive to improve my development skills.
Now... time to study some Dutch, play with the dogs, and then SLEEP.

Sunday, February 8, 2015

Progress update

I started Hartl's Rails Tutorial.  I was originally just going to do the free online book, but saw a deal for the ebook, solution manual and all the screencasts for $49 so I got that.  I started it on Thursday.  I am on Chapter 2 working on the second app project in the book, a simple microblogging site.  Work on the book may slow down considerably as I found a full-time internship!

I accepted an internship position in Amsterdam for Ruby on Rails.  First 3 months are internship, then regular employee after that.    It's going to be an adjustment commuting to A'dam every day (1.5hr each way).  Hoping I can use the commute to study Dutch.  Mondays are going to be the roughest day since I have Dutch class at night.  Will be a long day for me and the dogs at home.  I'm most worried about the dogs adjusting again to me being away from home during the day for such a long time.  Hopefully they will adjust quickly and not bark during the day.

I'm excited for the future.


Wednesday, February 4, 2015

Wednesday.

I finished chapter 13 of the Beginning Ruby by Peter Cooper. It covers Rails, Sinatra, & Ramaze.  Book is really showing it's age when the Rails version is 2.2.  :(  At least in the example Rails app, it gave me the opportunity to figure and update the old rails way to the terminology of Rails 4.2.  The intro to Sinatra was a nice bonus though.

I am thinking of moving onto Hartl's Rails Tutorial.  I want to move back into Rails learning and I want to be working with a more up-to-date book/tutorial.  I've gotten further than I thought I ever would in the Beginning Ruby book... 13 chapters, over 400 pages of Ruby code learning.  The following couple chapters of the book are on GUI-Based Desktop Application Development, Sockets, Daemons, etc.   I got the basics that I wanted to learn and I want to keep studying those basics in different ways and through building more and more applications and doing coding challenges like codewars.

Of course, I'm keeping up with doing some codewars.com challenges every day.  I am also doing at least 1 dutch lesson everyday.  I need to also learn 5-10 dutch irregular verbs and their past tenses every day too.

How to start your day.

Codewars challenges!

Tuesday, February 3, 2015

Monday + Tuesday

Working through Beginning Ruby by Peter Cooper, just finished chapter 12 (page 345) and built a small bot app.  I like this book better than Learn Ruby the Hard Way.  They cover many of the same topics.  I've also been trying to do a couple of the ruby fundamentals coding katas at codewars every day.

I had another dutch language class on Monday night.  I am trying to study a little Dutch every day.  I need to work on pronunciation.  It's hard for me.  And it kinda sucks being in an expat class.  The instructor will quickly switch to english for explanations and they other 2 students seem to like to use English instead of focusing on trying to speak in Dutch.  I try dutch first to try to explain things in class even if I butcher it (pretty sure that 100% of the time it's spoken terribly).

Sunday, February 1, 2015

Weekend progress

Today I worked on a coderbyte challenge, only to then get frustrated when my correct solution would not work in the browser-based ruby environ because it's Ruby 1.8.7!  So I looked online for more coding 'kata' style challenge sites and found codewars.com.  I've done a couple of the easier, fundamental challenges there and like it so far.

Last night, I took a break from coding to go to Rotterdam to see the TR/ST concert.  Was a lot of fun at cool venue that even had Club Mate (unofficial drink of the Berlin startup scene?  I've missed drinking them since I've moved from Berlin to the Netherlands)!  Yumm!

I did some more learn ruby the hard way, through lesson 46 and I think I'm done...  I'm just not into the tutorial that much anymore.  Exercises aren't that interesting to me.  Moving onto other resources.