Shout out to my mentor. Learn more about Active Record.

I just feel like I need to give a shout out to my Mentor for Bloc. I have previously left his name out of my posting to protect his privacy, but I realize that is silly. My mentor is Adam. If you have an interest in Bloc I highly recommend this guy. I can go on and on about how smart he is but check out his mentor page on Bloc. His knowledge on Ruby is very vast and has an innate ability to go in depth on a multitude of topics in programming.

I am currently implementing a has_and_belongs_to_many relationship between my bookmarks and tags within my current project. I still have to implement posting from email and add user a devise like user authentication without using the devise gem. My goal is to complete this all by this weekend and move on to Blockepedia on Monday. We will see how it all goes.

This is officially week 7 of my Bloc Mentorship which gives me 5 weeks to complete these two projects in addition to my capstone project.

Working on my backend right now.

After my last programming session I feel more comfortable working on the backend of the app. With the help of the console and Rspec I was able to figure out some nagging issues implementing my Bookmark model.

Also with the help of my mentor who explained to me the need for pluralization in my table, I have surpassed that hurdle.

Basically: 

Models - Singular

Controllers - Plural

Table - Plural

Boo yah! So next I have an issue, I will be referencing this post. 

*Hopefully I will eventually understand the Front-End and Javascript. 

Ruby Newbies

I had the opportunity to attend "Coder Night," which is a meetup where people from all different programming backgrounds come together and solve a code puzzle. The requirement is that you at least attempt the puzzle in order to attend, but the first visit is free of the requirement. I did not attempt the puzzle due to Bloc taking precedent and I already doing so many other thing, i.e Rspec Book, CS50 course, etc.

Even though I did not attempt the assignment I did get to see different languages explained and in action. It's also created an excitement to learn other languages, but for the time being I am concentrating on Ruby and dabbling Javascript in order to keep my focus. I do on the other hand want to learn Scala or Python next.

The group tended to be very much Ruby focused (6 out 10 of the languages were Ruby), which almost made seem like another Ruby meetup. The Java, Python, and GO programmers all had questions on Ruby and why certain things were done certain ways. There is not doubt that Ruby has it's flaws but it great to see there are a number of things that make Ruby great.

In Python for example there is basically only one way to do everything; In Ruby there is definitely multiple ways performs simple commands by making everything into an object. Another thing that kept coming is Ruby's vast community and support. It's seemed to be well respected by everyone in the room despite the comments "popularity." I guess you can compare the way they talked about the Rubyist to the same way people talk about Apple Fan People.

 I am definitely happy I ended choosing Ruby as my first full blown programming a language. It was also nice to get perspectives on code from people other than Rubyist.

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I have created a Google Group "Ruby Newbies." Hopefully it will be a way to openly connect with individuals new to Ruby who want to meet other's new to the language. Pair programming is also a great way in learning and hopefully connecting through a newbies platform will make it easier to start down the journey.

If anyone is interest keep an eye out on the group. I am hoping that this weekend I am have a hangout to meet new Rubyist like myself and share learning techniques

This week I hope to complete Blockmarks and continue on to Blockapedia next week.

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Task Off - App #3

The heroku page for Task Off is Taskoff.herokuapp.com - Please try it out. The concept did come from Bloc and not something I will be purusuing further, So feel free to fork it and have fun.

The code is on my Github and here is the Gist I started this from. I will be starting Block Marks tomorrow morning and excited to implement different concepts.

3rd App complete: Checking logs for errors.

I am just about to finish my 3rd month learning programming and stoked that I have completed my 3rd web app. I spent about 20 hours building it and maybe another 5 this week cleaning it up. This was also my first app that I did not follow a tutorial to build, although I did reference some old tutorials for specific things and used a Rspec tutorial as a guideline.

I am looking forward to starting my 4th app Blockmarks, which involve quite a few things I have not implemented. More on that to come.

I do want to pass on some advice as well as remind myself to check the logs when debugging. I always start with the error on the localhost page but alway forget to check the "rails server" log for the root of the issue. I found a pattern when I kept getting stumped and going to my mentor for help, only to find out my answer was in the log.

This morning I had an error running my app on the Heroku. I wrote a long message with embedded code to my mentor and realized I did not even check the heroku log. I ended up deleting my message and will work on the solution some time today. I will share the app later once I get a chance to fix. For here is the Github

Remember to check your logs. cmd+f "error"

2 things I wish I tried 2 months ago

I took the day off of work because my wife was not feeling well (I needed to watch the boy). I while they both were sleeping I got through a chunk of the Rspec book and also read the first 7 chapters of Learn Rails by Daniel Kehoe.

1. Learn Rails by Daniel Kehoe

Since I sign up for everything I signed up to review a copy of the book but actually never read it since I went directly from One Month Rails to Bloc, while finishing a semester for my MBA. Well I finally read through the intro (first 7 chapters) and wished I read it when I got it. If you are new to Rails or maybe only have 1 Rails app under your belt; I highly recommend this book. It gives a different perspective to OMR and the first few chapters are gold when it comes to Ruby Newbies. The book now cost $19 a month, but similar to OMR, you can through it in a couple of weekends.

2. Rails hotline
In the beginning of the Daniel Kehoe book he goes through tons of resources including Rails hotline, which sounds pretty awesome. I currently use Bloc's office hours and have become accustomed to it, but I think I will still try it out at least once. Those who aren't in Bloc could find this extremely helpful. I will definitely write a post on it when I do use it.

Some other gems I found that I would like to try eventually:
App Scroll 
Pairprogramwith.me
RailsWizard

Things to do: Taskoff and Rspec Book by Aaron Sumners.

I had to postpone my Test Driven Development due to fact of my Rspec learning curve. I was getting a little confused on how to describe the certain functions in the test spec file, but I did pick a book from Everdayrails which should only take a few hours to complete. My hope is once I complete that tonight I will have a better understanding of TDD and follow with it throughout the entire app.

My Taskoff app is going well for the most part, not too bad for no training wheels. I also got stuck on presenting the time left for the task (Each task will be destroyed after 7 days if not completed).

I will also need to postpone my Blocmarks app which I planned to begin with my mentor. I got a lot to work on today

Current reflections on what I have accomplished

Last night I attended my 5th Ruby meetup in 3 months (I am counting Code Retreat even though it was not specifically Ruby). I am pretty happy on how far I progressed and excited to continue my journey towards developing actual apps.

First Meetup:

I attended my first meetup back in November after one month of Codecademy and Learnstreet and only accomplished. I had at that point started Codecademy and Learnstreet but didn't have much done as far as building anything. After that meeting I was given a $25 off coupon for OMR and completed it within two weeks. I also established relationships with a local developers who have proven to very valuable assets in information gathering and learning.

My advice is start with a Rails to get your feet wet and excited about web development. Then stop Rails and concentrate only on Ruby. Once confident in Ruby implemented Rails but without the magic... i.e "$ rails g." Manually build your controllers, models, etc...

Last Nigh'ts Meetup:

Last night I met Ruby Newbies who were in the same position I was in 3 months ago. It was nice to be able to encourage them and provide pointers on what/how I learned. I am in no means an expert but I guess I can say I have been there. I now have 2 completed and working apps and have started my third.

If you are not apart of a Meetup then look for one in your area. Even if you have to drive an hour. My first meetup was at Envylabs (Code School) in Orlando and on the first night I was offered a position (Not in Ruby but in sales for local O-town company). I kindly declined not wanting to move to Orlando, but the point is you can build a great network of people that will prove to be valuable in the future.

Secret Rspec training

So I have moved on to working on pseudo client work.

I am considering applying to web developing apprenticeship and understand I need to learn best practices for ROR, aka "test driven development". My mentor recommended a rspec tutorial that segways perfectly into a client app. The tutorial is not posted in the Bloc curriculum, but my mentor sent me the guts of it. You can follow that process in my repo called Taskitoff (To Do app that auto deletes task after 7 days).

I am about just finished the setting up the app and will be attempting to create the Task Controllers with the said functionality. I am excited to see how it turns out, judging by the list I posted in my readme.md...thie shouldn't be too hard to complete.

*I will also be learning what this Capybara is all about.

Chugging along with Bloc: Passed the halfway point

I spent a total of 12 hours on Bloc this weekend and was able to get through 85% of the third section. To put that into perspective the 3rd section is week 5-6. I almost got all of that done in 2 days. This is the section where I can finally say I truly understand the MVC framework and can properly debug simple issues on my own, which I did all weekend.

The final checkpoints I have not completed include jquery and Ajax. Jquery I have some experience with, but Ajax I am very excited to learn and get through. I honestly have no idea what it does but have heard it thrown around.

Once I have completed those last checkpoints, I will be be going full force into Bloc's project work. The section gives you only the requirements needed for the app and together with my mentor we tackling this with pair programming. This will put me a great place to begin my capstone project in the next few weeks.

*Side note: I thinking about doing a Google Hangout with anyone who is also learning Ruby; If anyone is interested. It would be nice to find more people learning the same time as me.

I will probably post on twitter a hangout time this week.

Signed up for my first Ruby Conf

I heard about the Ruby conference, Ancient Ruby a month ago in my local Ruby meetup. I purchased a ticket to the event this week to capture the early bird price and elected to attend a special Refactoring workshop on the Wednesday before. This will be a huge step for me since it will be a month after the conclusion of Bloc and the workshop requires 3 months of Ruby experience.

I had to do a lot of begging with the wife, but convinced her that we could roll it into a little mini-vacation in St-Augustine. I am blessed to have a wife that has been supportive since the beginning of my journey.

I hope to make lots of valuable connections and walk away with tons of valuable information. I look forward to attending.

Bloc Project: Had a little hiccup with setting up my Facebook Omniauth. Facebook changes their site so much that the curriculum create this year is now outdated. I am not a huge fan of FB but realize its a necessary evil these days.

*Let me know if you are attending Ancient Ruby and we can meetup. Early bird pricing ends 1/15/14

If they can make penicillin out of moldy bread, they can sure make something out of you.

I have been very aggressive with my goals on learning Ruby and Rails and despite the fact that I am still ahead of schedule with Bloc, I found myself a bit down because of my shortfalls as the training wheels were removed (the tutorials no longer give you the code you need to attempt write it out yourself first). I spent the 2 separate 3 hours sessions just tying implement comments on my app and still didn't get it quite right, break my personal rule of not waiting to long to ask for help. I am definitely being a little hard on myself thinking that I have failed since I am not a Rails rockstar yet (I am over this now..see below).

"If they can make penicillin out of moldy bread, they can sure make something out of you." - Muhammad Ali

This morning I read this quote from Muhammad Ali that encouraged me help change my perspective. The quote was spoken to a High School student that sought Ali's advice on whether or not to attend college, feeling he was inadequate for higher education. I am definitely happy I am on this journey and even more grateful I am able to have the help of my mentor that will assist me with my last Comment Controller error this afternoon. I am sure that if I didn't sign up for Bloc I wouldn't of quit, but because of the program I am able to only spend 6 hours on a issue rather 6 days and then proceed with learning. If you are have a mentor or come into an issue, try to really solve it on your own but make sure you have limit on how much time you throw at - It's all part of the learning experience.

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Its also nice to see different people starting Bloc. I'm about to learn about Omniauth and implementing a Facebook login functionality. The next section is all on the beautification of my app.

Shout out to @surgerunner and @jeterrell. Follow both of them on Twitter if you have been at all contemplating @trybloc.

Missed my goal because of debugging.

I seemed to have made an error in my database and awaiting my mentor, Adam, meeting this afternoon to walk through this. I did a good amount of searching through Google on how to fix it and figured out I was way off. I was busy with the family and church yesterday and was unable to give time to figuring this out. I was able to spit off my git to my mentor and got his response stating my database explosion. I really respect my mentor and his ability not to just give me the answer, but give a little bit of info to assist me learning how to figure it out.

There is an extreme amount of value with a mentorship and apprentice type learning. I am going to push Bloc on every one but I recently discovered another site that offers rails mentor help. I have not used it and only heard of it through a Rabbit Hole Session, but if you are really interested in learning Rails or Ruby and tired of the roadblocks you continue to run into, I highly recommend a mentor or even a pair to share code and issues.

I have pair programming on my list of things to do and look forward getting started with that after Bloc ends. So if anyone is interested... Bloc will be over in March for me.

As far as my progress: I missed my goal of finishing Bloccit32 last weekend. I attribute that miss to me not reaching out for help sooner. I spent all Saturday night with my database issue but was determined to figure it out myself and then did not message Adam until Sunday morning. I realize I need to make a new rule for myself and not spend more than 3 hours on a problem. Just about every issue can be figured out through Google but sometimes it takes a half day or longer to really find that answer (speaking from experience). I need to advantage of the tools available sooner to ensure I stick to my personal goals in learning Rails.

*FYI if you are not part of the Ruby or Rails group on Google plus, you should join today. I have gotten responses to my questions in less 60 seconds. Its a great tool for questions and great for finding other beginners.

Watching Downton and installing Jekyll

As I write this I watching Downton Abbey (you read that correct) with my wife and running through a Jekyll tutorial. I found this after my researching and emerging from a bunny trail. Its amazing how you try to spend time solving a bug in your app and you end up reading blogs on totally unrelated Rails stuff. I was intrigued with Jekyll and gave it a shot. I already have the framework up and viewing it in http://localhost:4000. Once I get a good handle on rails I plan to learn other frameworks, but for now I will just use it while watching Downton.

Has anyone had experience with Jekyll or gitpages? I am thinking about following through and posting the finish project to github.io.

FYI ruby-lang.org was created using Jekyll.

I also watch the following video yesterday from a talk by @r00k. It was the first Ruby I watched and understood after my 9 weeks of learning Ruby. It was also very fitting since I just learned about Refactoring last week.

I have an addiction for learning

Just this week Lifehacker posted on how Harvard is offering a free online Intro to Programming to course as Jan 1st. Prior to signing up up for Bloc and deciding on Ruby as my language of choice, I watched the intro to this course when it was only offered either as Harvard credit or certificate. I had sense decided on how Ruby and discounted the program but was impressed with the professor's teaching style.

Well I have bought into the hype and already completed the first week of lectures, especially since it's free. Previously I mentioned I was scattered brain and in need of some organization of all my learning tools. I have another gist to keep track of all the things I plan to learn, but as far as this Harvard course, it is a great way to learn the basics of programming such as the higher levels ideas of it. I watched my son for a few hours today while my wife got a break and while he slept I knocked out the first week of course. I do not plan on getting into the nitty gritty of PHP and C as the professor implies but I do look forward to his explanations on Javascript and Algorithms. With this being an auxiliary learning tool I only plan on watching the lectures while I am on baby duty on the weekends.

If anyone is interested taking a Harvard course just out the Lifehacker article here. The first few weeks are avaialble if you have the extra time.


*FYI if you register for the course for $350 and complete it you will be eligible for a certificate to take another Harvard Extension course. I will be passing on that option.

Bloc update: about 8 lessons away from completing Bloccit and moving on to sudo client projects. The training wheels are coming!

Thanks to Bloc I am in love with Markdown and just implemented it in my app.

Need a break from all this debugging.

I spent my morning learning session in Codecademy's Ruby section. I have completed 68% thus far and hope to eventually finish that last little bit. I started a few weeks ago but never got back into it since Bloc started. I have also postponed Learning Ruby the Hard Way until Codecademy is done, just need to focus finishing one thing.  I find myself a little scattered brain in my learning outside of Bloc due to all these awesome tutorials and ideas I keep finding. I am glad I have auxiliary learning to my main learning to help me out when my brain is racked on one issue. I will need to make a gist wish-list of all the things I want to tackle in addition to my 2014 goals.

As of today I am stuck on a NoMethod Error in my code. My assumption is that I labeled an instance variable as plural with an "s" and called it as a singular. That is my guess because that has been the plague in all my errors....TYPOS!!! I can't tell you how crazy my typos have made me so far but I am grateful from the learning experience it has given me. I am just letting my brain rest until its ready for debugging later today! Looking forward to implementing Rspec next week so I can scale down my debugging time.

My current project is available on git if anyone would like to skim it. Called bloccit32. I am currently on lesson 13/21, which behind my schedule but ahead of schedule for Bloc.

I recently found a site where a devloper fed up with not learning decided to create 180 sites in 180 days. Check her out: Jennifer Dewalt. I am definitely inspired and hope to do something similar once Bloc is over, not only will it be "learning by doing" but it will be an opportunity to learn new things for 6 months straight.

(Another guy, Filip, just started this 180 day project and is currently on day 1.)

My realistic and obtainable goals for the new year

I am not one to set resolutions for New Year, not because I don't want to buy into the hype of setting goals and never obtaining them, but because I have bought into the hype and hipster logic that its cool not to buy into it...

This year will be slightly different though, actually a lot different. This year I am coming into 2014 with goals already in place and I thought it would be best to utilize this blog as a bit of accountability. Below I will list the goals for next year in relation to programming and where I would like to be. Some goals will be easier than others, but I believe the importance of setting realistic goals for my journey will be a key to my success, even if I miss them.

I have laid out each goal by the quarter I would like to achieve it; only because that is the way my works. This quarter goals start out as as easy but will become more aggressive as I hope to gain more experience as time goes on. I will also leave one for a buffer (trying to realistic and obtainable). I have notice some job description asking for Stack Overflow profiles, more for the Senior Roles. I see an importance in being able to learn by teaching and answering questions for other programmers. I also want to eventually contribute to Rails and other frameworks, either creating tutorials or even helping the open source project. *I really want to be somebody when I grow up :) I also plan to learn Objective C and iOS to complement my web app learning. I have 2-3 actual ideas of full fledge web apps and would love to build a big audience of users through iOS.

Jan - March - 5th month into learning - Taking it easy on the goals and focusing on learning

1. Complete Bloc and have 5 completed Ruby on Rails functional apps in my Github.
2. Continue work on my capstone project by collaborating with fellow Rubyist on ideas. 
3. Contribute to at least 5 Stack Overflow Questions - Obtain a score of at least 30.
4. Become more confident in Javascript and it's frameworks
5. Starting in March begin publish 1-2 mini web app projects a month

April - June - More aggressive goals since I would like to have a new job by then.

1. Obtain at least 3 interview with companies for Rails specific jobs. 
2. Begin Pair programming on a project
3. Contribute to 25 total Stack Overflow Questions
4. Contribute to an open source project in some way
5. Launch my first web app to the public.
6. Start as a Web Developer 
7. Share a Rails tutorial I have created from scratch

July - September 

1. Begin researching  and coming up with ideas on how to contribute to the rails framework
2. Mentor another beginner
3. Launch second full web app
4. Share another tutorial I will create.
5. Begin learning Objective C and iOS programming

October - December
(1 year of learning completed)

1. Contribute to Rails in some way.
2. Launch a third full app using rails
3. Answer 75 Stack Overflow questions. 
4. Have an iOS app built
5. Have at least 20 mini apps completed and submitted to my github.

*I have made a pubilc gist to keep track of this. This is living list, I will make additions and deletions to the gist if needed, but the ultimate foal is to become a decent web developer.