I made it! Job contract signed!

Very excited to announce... I signed a job contract!  I was able to go from a code nobody to signing a job contract for a full-on developer position in 5 months.  No $30,000 dev bootcamp necessary.  Just self-teaching with online tutorials and scoring a jr. dev internship.  Seriously, that's crazy, right?

As of May 1, my title will officially be Software Developer. :-)  I am staying on at the company where I am doing my jr. developer internship.

If I can make it, I don't see why anyone else out there can.  I started flirting with the idea of trying to become a web developer in November.  I started reading some blogs from others that found jobs as jr. devs after self-studying for 6-8 months and got motivated.

There were 2 big obstacles to getting a job I saw when I started out learning to code... 

• Living in another country and not speaking much of the native language. (How am I supposed to find a job or internship then?)
• No dev bootcamps nearby. (I almost considered doing an online bootcamp....)

I didn't let these worries deter me.  Here's my milestones on my journey to get a developer job:

• On November 13, I successfully battled homebrew and xcode error messages and installed Ruby and Rails and a text editor.
• On November 26, I created a github account.  I didn't really understand the git process at all.
• On December 16, I finished my first Rails app - One Month Rails' Pinterest clone.  I kept working through every free online rails tutorial I could find online.  I started the precouse work for 2 different online bootcamps - Tea leaf & Firehose project.  I was considering doing one of those.  
• On January 13,  I applied for a couple jr developer internships.  I almost didn't.  Some of them were posted in Dutch.  I didn't think I qualified after only doing some online tutorials for ruby and rails for the past month.  And, I definitely didn't think I was qualified when I don't speak Dutch well.  My husband convinced me to just apply and the worse they could say is 'No' or flat out ignore me.  So I did.  Caveat:   There were no positions in my current city.  So I applied in other cities within commuting distance.  I was willing to commute ~3 hrs roundtrip from Den Haag to Amsterdam every single day.  I still commute.  It's freakin' tough but I've gotten used to it.  If I get a decent seat on the train, I pull out the MacBook and work on code stuff for work or work on Hartl's RailsTutorial. 
• On February 9, I started a jr. developer internship (lots of struggling with tasks at work and reading Hartl's Rails Tutorial during my personal time happening for the next few months).
• On April 14, I signed a contract as a full-time software developer!

So that's 5 months from the time I installed Ruby and Rails to I signed my job contract!

I still have a lot to learn.  I am learning something new everyday.  Some days I feel like I'm drowning and some days I feel like a coding champion.  I truly enjoy coding.  I'm kinda shocked sometimes that I do as much as I do.  I think about coding and the coding community all the time.  I never felt that way in my previous career.

I am so excited for the future.  I can't wait to see where I'm at in 3-6 months from now.

Week 8 finished + holiday weekend!

I finished my 8th internship week!  Time is going by fast!

I worked on some new tests and features for the main app project.  I struggled with the proper setup of a cucumber (+capybara+poltergeist) test for 2 forms that are submitted using JS instead of ruby.  I figured out how to get the test to test the JS functionality and pass the individual tests, but then it was breaking a couple other tests in my full test suite.  I then adjusted my test env to run the database cleaner between each test and, voila, it was fixed!  I still am unclear how there the carryover of the @javascript notation for those scenarios were breaking the other tests, but this solution fixed it.

I am also getting more familiar with working on an api within an app.  I struggled a little bit this week with changing a feature on the api.  With everything I work on, it seems the list of stuff to learn gets longer and longer.  It's really amazing the possibilities of what you can build in Ruby on Rails.  I feel like I'm only just learning what is possible with Ruby on Rails and it's both overwhelming (most of the time) but, also, very exciting and motivates me to learn more (all of the time)!  :-)

I am still working through Hartl's Rails Tutorial.  I'm currently on Chapter 10.  I am going back and re-reading some sections from the past couple of chapters on creating user sessions and cookies.  I feel I didn't understand all of that discussion, so I'm trying to look back at some material before continuing on.  I bought the railscasts with the tutorial, so I'm taking the time to watch through those.  I hadn't been watching them, but after watching one on the signup procedure, I found it super useful to get Hartl's commentary as he worked through adding features.  I am going to work on watching more of the screencasts this week particularly the sections on user sessions and cookies.

Halfway through my jr dev internship.

I finished up my 6th week at my internship last week.   I'm halfway through my 3-month program.  For me, it was another busy week of working on different tasks for real project code.  I follow a similar formula for everything I build: think about what needs to be built, write a suitable feature test in Cucumber, go through each step in the feature by letting the test steps guide my coding.

I have started working through Hartl's Rails tutorial during my morning and evening train commutes (as long as I find a place to sit).  I felt that only working on it during the weekend was counter-productive since I spent a good bit of time trying to figure out what I was working on from the last time.  I was able to work through 3 chapters last week by simply doing it during my commute!  The book is great and is helping me go back over basics that I might not have fully understood when I started learning Rails.  Plus, reviewing these things while I am doing project work is really helping me think through concepts a lot better.

On Saturday, I finished the third and final week of the free online MOOC Dutch course from futurelearn & University of Groningen.  I really liked the course!  I think it was a good supplement to the in-person course I am taking.  I only wish this course had lasted longer than 3 weeks!

I went to a RailsGirls workshop on Sunday and learned about MeteorJS.  I built a simple to-do list app.  It's easy to follow and I recommend checking it out on their website.  I was super impressed with the ease to setup Meteor (1 command in terminal and it was ready to go.  No error messages - whew!)  It was also really cool how easy/quick it was to deploy it and even make the android APK for my deployed app.  Super easy.  Once I finish Hartl's Rails tutorial, I want to start learning JS and I might try building more in Meteor to get more comfortable with JS since I liked the framework.  I don't think Meteor is at the point that it is production ready since it is so new and they are still adding features.  But it is still really cool to try out

I am still taking an in-person dutch course 1x/week.  I have kinda put dutch on the back burner during the week, since I'm so focused on coding right now.  What I need most for my dutch to improve is to have a patient speaking partner.  I have asked a dutch friend to start meeting with me on the weekend to practice.  Hopefully I can make that a regular, weekly occurrence and get some noticeable improvement with my dutch.

Week 5 of my internship: Update

Week 5 of my internship is done.  Working on Bitbucket on 2 different projects.  It's definitely a lot different to work on existing code and not writing a simple app from scratch like in the tutorials.  I have to spend time reading and figuring out what is going on in the code.  But I figure out things or I ask for help to figure them out.  One of the applications is in Dutch including the cucumber feature tests.   I think I'm doing ok with it.

This is pretty much sums up how I feel all the time and will for a long time:  "Programming is awesome if you like feeling dumb and then eventually feeling less dumb but then feeling dumb about something else pretty soon."  I hope I'm learning enough and learning it fast enough.

On Saturday morning, I worked through all of the second week's coursework of the online dutch MOOC course I'm taking through futurelearn and the university of groningen.   I didn't work on any code on Saturday.

On Sunday, I finished Chapter 5 of Hartl's Rails tutorial.  It's frustrating to only work on the tutorial during the weekend.  It's hard to pick it up after not touching it for a week and know where I was, where to go.  I need to try to maybe work a little during my train commute on it during the week.  I want to finish this book!  It was a goal of mine since I first started coding a couple months ago.

Here goes week 6....

Week 4 Internship update

For the past week or so, I've been working on various tasks with real project code!

Building a mailer, updating a rake task, adding columns to various models, updating controller methods, updating gemfiles, etc.  And writing features and spec tests in Rspec and Cucumber.  I spend a lot of time thinking and reading about new things I'm encountering in real project code.  I've learned about (and helped implement) an hstore column in a model and get that hash properly outputted in JSON.  I've learned about interactors to keep controllers clean and uncluttered with methods.  I've gotten several merge/pull-requests under my belt.

I'm more excited about coding the more I learn.  I'm still learning Dutch every week at class, plus during my ~3 hr commute everyday, I've been studying Dutch vocabulary using Memrise.  It's really helping to grow my word bank.  I've also started a MOOC free dutch course being offered by the University of Groningen.  I've been studying Hartl's Rails tutorial during the weekends too.  I still want to complete that book.  My goal is to complete it in the next month.  Then, I plan on going back to seriously study Javascript & jQuery.  I think that would be a good knowledge base for me to tackle next.

Needless to say, I'm busy all the time and I don't have much free time during the week for much else besides work, commute, dog walks, eat, sleep, repeat.  I am trying to make time for yoga a few times during the week.  I miss not running or going to the gym in the evenings, but, frankly, I'm just too tired.  I'm hoping with daylight savings time and longer days, I'll make time for evening runs at least once or twice during the week.

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 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 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.

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.