Learning Front End + Coding as Art

I may already 'made it' as a Ruby on Rails developer, but that doesn't mean that I don't have weaknesses in my developer abilities.  I know that doing creative stuff in the front-end is not my strongest area.  Sure, I'm able to work on the haml/slim/html views and coffeescript/jquery in the front-facing portion of the Rails app I work on, but coming up with cool designs and integrating/writing interesting javascript are not things I consider myself good at.   I've also been trying to level up my javascript and learn more ReactJS, but felt that some gaps in my understanding of the fundamentals of javascript have been making it really challenging for me.  I think my approach of reading random bits and pieces about JS from online articles, tutorials, videos has only left me feeling... fragmented.

I feel like I needed more of a path for learning with little challenges and project along the way, so.... I have started the FreeCodeCamp front-end curriculum to push me along/keep me on track.  It might be silly for someone with some experience as a dev to do this curriculum, but I don't think so.  I have been able to fly through the HTML/CSS/Bootstrap parts and started on the first individual project for FCC on Saturday -- a tribute page.

It's kinda silly, but I'm really love + proud of the page I made.  It's so silly, really, but I actually keep going to look at it again, to see the responsive design as I change the size of the browser window from big to small, and think about the quotes I included from Andy Warhol as I swipe through the 5 simple sections.  It makes me smile.  I love it because I feel like I finally made something with my coding skills solely for art's sake, I didn't make it for anyone else and made it in the exactly the way I wanted.  I made something for no reason other than to exist and be beautiful.

I hosted a RailsGirls meetup and give my first coding workshop!

So excited to write about this.  One year after building my first Rails app, I organized and presented my first coding workshop.  It's a pretty amazing thing to be able to do.

I have been kinda consumed lately with worrying and preparing for giving my first coding workshop.  I hosted ~18 coders at our local RailsGirls event for all day workshop.  I introduced the concepts of MVC and styling with CSS and the Bootstrap gem as we worked on adding functionality to a Tamagotchi - virtual pet app.  It was fun, but stressful for me.  And it was only stressful because I'm not used to being the center of attention or speaking for ~5 hours straight!

That's me! Presenting to ~18 bright (mainly women) coders.

Everyone was supportive of one another, and I really felt like we created a safe, friendly, open environment for learning about coding with Ruby on Rails.  I'm really proud of that.   I would love to do another workshop in a few months.  It's just kind of exhausting and intense to plan for 5 hours of coding content + activity.  I really had no idea how long my presentation would actually take or if folks would be bored out of their minds.

I was thinking it would be great to offer another, more low-key meetup option like a "Coffee & Code" type event where a small study group could get together for a couple hours and get help on working on their own projects or online tutorials/courses from a coach or 2.  It would take the pressure off of one person to present and host an all-day event.

Overall it was a great experience and empowering to be a room filled with bright women all interested and focused on coding!  I am, of course, thankful to work for a company that supports activities like this too!

Of course I have been neglecting blogging lately, but I have still been trying to learn new stuff- I've learned some more Angular & I've been playing around with Rails API with a Angular client-side app, but this experience really trumps anything else I've been doing otherwise!

Monday's progress -updated my github pages site!

Worked the past few days on Learn Ruby the Hard Way.  Finished through exercise 31.

I mostly worked this weekend on a site to show my progress/portfolio in a better, concise way than just the blog.  I worked on my github pages site and built it into this over the weekend using HTML5, CSS3 and customized Bootstrap.

The part that took the most time was the design of the navigation at the top.  I first went with a navbar, but didn't like the look 100%.  So I switched over to the nav pills style and customized it.  So figuring out the design by building different things took the majority of my time.  I'm sure I'll keep nitpicking at it, but I like it for now.

Thursday Progress

• Started working on an awesome site for my web portfolio.  very simple so far but bootstrap'd.  It's up on github pages.  Will continue to work on it.  Feels like an accomplishment to easily do a task like this.  Woot!  Means I've learned stuff!

• Worked through most of the Firehose Project pre-course work.  Still deciding about the online bootcamps!
• Working through Learn Ruby the Hard Way (part of the firehose project pre-course work).  On lesson 14 or so.

Tuesday's update

Since last post, I wanted to build a Reddit style site.  I wanted to do it with minimal tutorial step-by-step guidance and no scaffolding magic.

I found a good resource here.  Not a bunch of code copying, I completed the bones of it and what I really found useful is the user story prompts.  I need to do that when I do my own project, keeps me from panicking :).  I even included additional changes to displaying the up/down votes and used bootstrap styling...  It includes pagination, bootstrap-sass gem, upvoting and downvoting using boolean (true/false logic) in which user has only 1 vote on a topic and can change between up/downvotes, authentication via Devise....

RedditClone Screenshot

I've been thinking a lot what my path I will continue on is going to be.  There's supposed to be a dev bootcamp in Amsterdam in March or April (maybe?).  I have no idea about the costs or if I will be invited as a participant.  That's at least 2-3 months away though.  There's a Railsgirl beginner workshop coming up at the beginning of February, I'd like to go to it, but I'm afraid I've advanced past its topics since I'm already set up a dev environment and building little beginner apps and deploying to Heroku and posting on github.

I've been thinking about signing up for an online bootcamp and I'm leaning towards Tealeaf Academy.  I've seen some blog posts online and also on reddit on folks who have succeeded with Tealeaf and gotten jobs afterwards.  The price is one of the lowest I've seen ($2500 total) and you pay in 3 different segments.  Estimated completion time for the program is 4 months.  Working on it full-time, I'd hope I could complete it in less though.  I'm definitely committed.  I've currently got a 29 day streak going on Github.  I'm working hard and struggling through some topics.

I think I'm going to look into the prep work for Tealeaf and work through it.  I think it's mostly a review, so I think I could go through it pretty quickly, then I can make a decision on the program.

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

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.

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!