More Progress, learning more OOP Ruby.

As I hit more advance topics in beginner ruby such as OOP, learning speed slows down drastically.  I have to slow down and absorb.  Did a little Learn Ruby the Hard Way, but kinda stalled, so switched over to reading Tealeaf Academy's Object Oriented Programming in Ruby online book.  I think these online books they have posted up for free use are good and concise little tutorials with good exercises at the end of each section. This helped me think through some concepts.  What might look like jumping around and taking a while to finish 1 book, is actually me going to other sources to figure things out, rather than keep going and not really understanding a concept.

Studied while listening to old indie music I haven't listened to in years: Of montreal, wolf parade, Tapes 'n tapes, sunset rubdown, karl blau...  It was awesome!

I am also trying to take time every day to work on my Dutch studies too.  I went to Dutch class on Monday and felt terrible because I hadn't really taken any time during the week to look over anything.  I am making it a point to go over vocab and do the online exercises every day.  It's the only way I can hope to train my ear and mouth to speak better dutch.  Class wasn't cheap, so I want to get the most out of each session.

Final pre-course work challenges finished! Foobar + temp conversion challenges.

As part of thefirehose project's pre-work course, there is a foobar challenge.  Although I know my solution needs refactoring, it's pretty cool to be able to get out a working solution for this in < 5 mins in Ruby.  I remember doing this challenge when I started coding two months ago and it took me hours and I had to *cheat* and look for hints online (I did it in jQuery instead of Ruby then).  Understanding the logic and for/while loops is so much better now!

The last challenge of the pre-course work was to make a temperature converter for C to F.  Easy.  Done in a couple minutes. The bonus 2nd part of this challenge was to allow user input (already did it for previous challenge) and make it convert both ways.  This was a little trickier because I needed to use regex to extract the integer and the unit for an input string like 32F or 101C.  But I did it.  Maybe not the prettiest solution, but it works!

So, I'm done with thefirehose project pre-course work now.  So I'm pretty much ready to go for either Tealeaf or thefirehose project bootcamps.

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.

Wednesday's Progress

• Finished Tealeaf Prework Course!  Found the Ruby book and exercises useful.
• Jumped back into Beginning Ruby book. Finished Chapter 8, Chapter 9 and started Chapter 10 (page 253).

Progress update.

• Read as much as I could this weekend...   On the train, in bed, on the couch, at the cafe, where ever. I made it into Chapter 8 of Beginning Ruby (page 184).
• Also working through Tealeaf Academy's precourse work (Ruby review, etc) when I get bored in the Beginning Ruby book.
• Realizing I need to make a separate page to list all the tutorials and books I've complete and still have to check off to help me keep on task.  So many resources out there to get distracted by!
• Unrelated: Slowly absorbing more dutch language.  Had my second class tonight.  Need to desperately practice pronunciation.
• Still undecided on the online bootcamps - deciding on this is on the backburner until next week...  I like Tealeaf's lower price but dislike not having a mentor and the lack of connection I felt when I emailed them questions about the program and if they had any participants from the EU.  I love thefirehoseproject's mentorship opp and fast personal response to my email questions.

Friday's Progress

Finished CodeAcademy's Ruby Course!  Started up on Peter Cooper's Beginning Ruby book.  I am in Chapter 3, page 91.  I just finished a basic ruby program that inputs a txt file and does a bunch of analytics on it (counting characters, words, sentences, lines, etc).

Things are going well!  Pushing as hard as I can.  Github streak is starting up again :)