June 13: Dabbling in Elixir, more jQuery, more Ruby.

I didn't do much coding outside of work during the week.  Work has been fine, I feel like I'm progressing at a good rate, but outside of work, it was a rough week, so I couldn't put in much effort to coding during my free time.

But, I did spend late night friday/early saturday morning working through a Elixir tutorial that I had been wanting to tackle for a few weeks.  I successful went through it pretty quickly and got a fairly simple CRUD quotes app working perfectly locally.  However, I spent more time than that trying to get the deployment to Heroku (not in the tutorial) to work and failed.

To make sure it wasn't me or a dev environment issue (didn't figure it was, since it was running perfectly locally, but did it for a sanity check...), I cloned another sample elixir app and quickly set it up and deployed it easily, so I think based on the heroku error logs that there's some maybe dependencies issue going on.  It's kinda weird working with such a new framework like Phoenix, where it is so new that you git clone the framework directly onto your machine to use it.  For this specific tutorial, I was git checking out a specific branch with an older version of the framework to use... and maybe in deployment that's getting jacked.  I think maybe this is where my issue lies, but I'm not sure.  I gave up on trying to fix this project's deployment, I'd rather spend time learning something else or doing my own independent project to practice that waste more time on this one.  I'm glad there was this tutorial to do, but I wish it would have spent a lot less time on making the CSS snazzy and instead go through the deployment process.  I'd like some reassurance that this app was successfully deployed with its specific config settings even if it visually looks ugly! :-/

Today, I also finished up another segment in the Treehouse jQuery course.  I'm 1/2 through that course.  It's hard jumping back into studying something like jQuery with several days of break in between.  Takes a while to get my head back in it.

I'm still slowing reading POODR, probably 3/4 through it.  It's getting more difficult to keep up at the end.  But, I'm just trying not to get hung up on every little thing that's over my head and power through for now, since I plan to re-read it again in a few months.

I constantly feel like I need to keep pushing to learn and try out other languages like JS or elixir and not be solely vested in Ruby, since who knows if/when Ruby on Rails is going fade into the background.  But after experimenting with Elixir, it's clear that I really do love coding in Ruby.  It's just such a readable and pretty language, I'm not sure how you couldn't like it.  I'm really glad that I started out my coding adventure with Ruby and Rails.  And I'm happy it's what I work with, at least for now.

Progress Update: Learning jQuery, Studying OO Design...

I've been spending most of my commute time reading Sandi Metz's Practical Object-Oriented Design in Ruby.  I'm 2/3 of the way through it.  Some concepts are harder than others to understand, but I'm ok with that.  I'm sure I'll be re-reading this book again in 6 months.  I've been learning about agile dev, duck typing, inheritance, etc.  I really love how Sandi presents concepts.  I've also watched some of her podcast appearances (like on Talking Code) and her RailsConf 2015 talk ("Nothing is something") and can recommend them all.  She is inspiring to me...  She reminds me of my unofficial mentor at my last job/career... an incredibly intelligent female who I could only wish to be as smart as one day!

I'm slowly moving through the Treehouse JavaScript courses.  I finished up the JS fundamental courses and moved onto the jQuery course over the weekend.  I have been having a hard time finding the time to work on these courses during the work week.

Week's Progress. Starting slowly on jQuery/JS...

Another week, more coding.  I completed Codecademy's jQuery course and started their AngularJS course this week.  When I first started coding, I spent a couple days playing around and learning a little jQuery.  It was very confusing and weird looking to me back then.  Now, it seems manageable to learn and understand (eventually).  It's also nice to look at something besides Ruby.  It makes me realize that I definitely can tell I've gotten more comfortable with code since I started out.

May 1 was my first day as a full-time employee and not an intern.  Didn't feel much different. :-)  I've been working at home for the past week.  I think it's just such a cool thing that I can do that.  I've never had a career where I can do that.  (...You can't exactly do that as an analytical chemist.)  I've been taking advantage of it, replacing my morning commute with a run a couple times this week.   Studying coding full-time for the past 6 months, I didn't feel like I had the time to exercise.  I had to make one or the other a priority and I choose coding.  But now, I feel I'm in a position that I can refocus and make some time for myself to stay healthy and in shape.  So, I am trying to get back into an exercise routine.

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.

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!