The mistakes I made

I made lots of mistakes but wanted to share a couple, because I am sure there a lot of questions on what I did, but even more on what I wish I didn't do. Most my mistake revolve around Ruby and not Rails, but that is mainly because I used Bloc and my mentor to help prevent those mistakes and stay on track.

My Mistakes:

1. I spent too much time watching videos and not actually coding. For the first month I slowly churned through the Codecademy lessons and watched youtube videos about the idea of coding thinking that was a good approach. Everyone learns different and videos are very helpful, but its easy to hide behind videos and not do anything. If you are not using a book to learn then you are only spinning your wheels. Code School, Tree House, and etc are great tools also, but you need to do more than that sooner if you want to stay on tracks, which leads me to my next mistake.

2. I am ashamed to say but I avoided books like the plague in the beginning of my learning. I thought I knew the basics, but I was far from it, so when it came time to complete Conways Game of Life the first time, I had no clue what was what, or even how to approach the problem. I know have a goal to complete a book a month, I unfortunately have not hit that goal yet but its a goal. Countless blogpost and people I interacted with recommend the Chris Pine book, but I never took the plunge and it is now free.

I now have too many books and plan  to read through them all before the end of the summer. I am toying at the idea of having a book club with Ruby Newbies once we finish this current curriculum but I am not sure of how new schedule will play out.

3. Udemy, I do not like talking down to any company, so I want to iterate that this tool is a great tool; if used correctly.

I spent the first month of learning programming going through tons of Udemy videos on languages that were unrelated and not needed, including a Bit-coin course. I also spent money on a lot of the videos due to their "flash" sales for different out of date lessons. There are still videos today that I purchased for too much money and have not watched. Again I am not talking bad about the material, but do need to point out that there is no need to become a "certified developer," like one course exclaims in it's title. I was doing less learning programming and doing more learning more terms of programming. Each video did offer problem sets that would have probably helped me but I actually watched most of the videos on my iPad and skipped passed most of them, which is probably the reason why this did not work for me.

Getting a job only happened after I decided to actually write code and work on problem set in Ruby. Also keep in mind that you have to do things that others haven't. What makes you different from everyone else who did the same tutorial you did? 

4. By the time it came I got organized and learned Rails using Bloc, I found that I only knew half of it. Ruby is essentially to really knowing Rails, so learn Rails but make sure you really understand Ruby and how to read docks. I originally applied to App Academy and found out very quickly I not know how code the sum of an array of numbers. If I took the time and completed actual problems it would not have been such a hard problem. My biggest mistake was not actually practicing, I did complete Rails apps but knew nothing about how to search the Ruby docs, because I never really had to.

The whole reason I started RubyNewbies.org was too push my self to actually practice Ruby problems and help others do the same. I have since accomplished that, now being in 4th week.

By the way it's:

def (numbers*)
      numbers.inject(:+)
end

Summing it all up:

Watching videos are great but your skill will not develop until you open the IDE and write some code. Also avoid the copy and paste method, just write it out, this is precisely how I built the muscle memory to write the code. Complete the questions in the back of the book, or the extra problems in RubyMonk. download and install Ruby Koans! Do stuff that involves pure Ruby, there are a lot of people who know Rails and not Ruby, set yourself apart to get that job.

My advice:

Use the FREE! Chris Pine book and begin learning with this in addition to Codecademy. Then join a free study group on the Odin Project. Rails is not too bad to learn, but working in Ruby and thinking like a programmer with it comes a little harder.

Also, don't forget to be consistent with your learning. If you are not, you will just prolong what you are set out to accomplish.