CS50x & a Raspberry Pi Art Project

Since my last blog post, I decided to finally try Harvard's Intro to Computer Science course (CS50) that is available to take for free through EdX. The course consists of 12 weeks of lectures, 9 problem sets and a final independent project.  Watching the lectures and working through the problem sets is a definite time commitment, especially as the coursework progresses it gets much more challenging.

During the past month I've been going through a very stressful period so I've found this course to be a great escape for me. I have thrown myself into the coursework and have been working intensely on getting through all 9 problem sets. I've learned C by solving problems using different sorting algorithms, different types of data structures, allocating memory, recovering 'lost' jpeg images from a data file, implementing a spellchecker and a web server ...all in C. I even wrote PHP for the first time to complete the last few assignments. It was nice to see that the things I'd learned as a Ruby on Rails dev were transferable when I was working in a unfamiliar language like PHP. To me, it made me feel like a real programmer. Though the language's syntax is different, the underlining principles and problem solving strategies are pretty universal. It's just really an adjustment to the syntax of the language. So I was able to jump into a PHP project, without any background in the language and get through the tasks relatively simply.

Last week, I finished all the problem sets, I just started on my final project. For this project, you have complete freedom to choose to write any kind of software that you want. I knew I wanted to do something artistic, interactive and with language(s) outside my comfort zone. I drew inspiration from a few places-- the current exhibit of Jean Tinguely's art at the Stedelijk Museum, an interest in learning about Raspberry Pis (and maker culture), and recent attendance at a React Native meetup.

My original idea was a Tinguely-inspired wall installation with EL wire, leds, motors that were connected to a raspberry pi that could be controlled/interacted remotely by a user with a mobile app. As I researched more about hardware and RPis, I soon felt overwhelmed by the hardware side of it - wiring, circuitry, power supply, soldering.

Since my focus is mainly on the software, I didn't want to get discouraged during my project by the hardware side of things. I want to setup myself for as much success as possible. So, I opted to go simpler for now and purchased a preassembled LED board with a square grid of 64 LEDS. This way, I can focus on the writing the software and getting my feet wet with hardware/RPi. Then, if it is a blast to work with, I can dive deeper into building my own hardware on future projects.

I will be using 2 pieces of hardware for this project, a Raspberry Pi 3 and UnicornHAT:

Raspberry Pi 3 w/ an AMAZING rainbow case

UnicornHAT 64-LED board

I still haven't received the hardware I ordered yet, but I've already started on the software infrastructure that is necessary to get the Raspberry Pi communicating with a remote native app or web browser. I've already gotten the RPi's software communicating with a server and receiving data from a React Native app using websockets. I am going to post much more frequently to detail how the build process is going and document what I'm up to.

This is one of the most intensive projects I've taken on by myself, since I will be writing code in multiple languages that I am not familiar with. It'll be the first time I'll work with hardware, write a native app, work with websockets, code in Python, etc etc. I can't wait to see how it all turns out.

Slow going progress.

I'm slowly still working on Ruby/Rails mastery and trying to add some AngularJS and jQuery to that as well.  I've only been working on Ruby/Rails at my job during the week and trying to do some online coursework on AngularJS during the weekends.  My study pace has slowed down the past few weeks because I'm also making time for running and freeletics and trying to find a flat so we can finally move to Amsterdam permanently.

I've been super encouraged over the past few weeks by other aspiring devs out there in the world!  I've gotten messages and tweets from folks that are also working their butts off to become software developers.  It's very humbling to get messages from others that say I'm an inspiration and motivator for them on their own journeys.  I appreciate the fact that others are taking time to contact me, and I love the community of coders worldwide.

I'm glad to give inspiration or advice to others out there!  I love chatting with others in similar situations.  But, I feel it's necessary to clarify my current skills levels.  I'm very much a Junior Ruby developer.  I can figure some stuff out and generally understand tasks set before me, but struggle with how exactly to write code to build out some features.  I need guidance often from my boss, an expert Rails developer.  I hunt google & stackoverflow A LOT.  I know it sounds awesome that after studying & interning for the past 5 months that a got a job as a dev (which it is), but please realize that it wasn't some magical turning point in my coding abilities when I got a job or that I'm some coding rockstar.  I am not.  I struggle everyday, just on new things than the day before.  I am painfully aware of my inadequacies.   I've been working from home for the past 2 weeks with minimal support from senior devs and that has been a struggle...No one around to talk through things I don't really understand or get guidance on problems.  That's definitely added to my frustation with my jr skill level lately.  I sometimes wonder what the hell I'm doing, but I'm hopeful that in a few months, that my skills and confidence will grow a lot more.

I really like learning another new language (jQuery & AngularJS) so far.  It's challenging to think in a new language and learn its context.  I think it is helping me solidify RoR concepts as I push my brain to think in a different language.

Week 7 and RailsGirls Coaching!

I finished week 7 of my dev internship.  What a busy week... LOTS of coding, a little dutch practice and a RailsGirls event!

At my internship, I worked on some new features for one of the projects.  One of the main things I worked on last week was adding a form that was tied to other model inside the view of another.  I have had to do this once before and it was definitely tricky for me to wrap my head around how to do this.  In the beginner tutorials, it's easy... You never add a form for another model inside some other view, you put a form in the view of that model and use a simple form_for tag with your instance variable correctly defined and it's easy.  I figured out most of the solution on my own and was proud of that.  I found this blog post helpful in figuring it out and also helping me understand using form_for and form_tag better.

On Friday evening and all day Saturday, I coached at my first RailsGirls event in Utrecht.  I was definitely nervous about coaching since I feel like a huge beginner myself most of the time.  I was worried I would be useless to my students.  Luckily that was not the case.  Coaching helped me realize that I have learned a lot about coding and rails in a few short months.  I was able to help students get their dev environments setup on their machine... even a windows machine (eek!).

What I wasn't expecting was how emotional the event would be.  There was several other coaches that shared their stories of getting into coding, many taking their first steps at a RailsGirls workshop just like this one.  It was also humbling to hear the story of some of my students who are eager to learn coding so that they can change their careers and better their lives despite difficult situations.  It was pretty inspiring.  What caught me off-guard was hearing that I am an inspiration to them.  I guess I never thought of my journey as being able to inspire someone else or being that impressive.  I know since November I have studied and coded nearly every day.  And I struggle to improve my dutch language.  But I am very lucky to have a partner that supports me and allows me to take risks like changing my career.  I am impossibly hard on myself and think that I should know more than I do at this point in my learning.  I do recognize how hard I have worked and continue to work towards my goal of being a Rails developer and, even though, I work as a jr dev intern right now, I don't consider myself successful in my goal until I am a full-fledged developer with a real salary and leave interning behind.  Hopefully in a few weeks that will be the case.

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.