Ember Talk tonight

I am giving a talk on Ember @FrontEndOrlando. I spent about 3 months interested in Ember, but never took the plunge into trying it out. After finally getting a job in Rails I have taken my extra learning time at home to learn things such as Front-End development and Objective-C.

Giving a talk has also been on my list for awhile and I am killing two birds with one stone by presenting on Ember. I learned a lot in the last few weeks and looking forward to starting a project using Ember soon.

Link to my presentation(draft).

Tell Don't Ask concept

So I finally attended the Orlando Ruby User's Group for the first time since October and blown away from how much I learned from two topics I was already familiar with. One was on creating an MVP and the other was on authentication with the devise gem.

The first was given by Code School's Carlos Souza and he gave us a sneak peak into a video series coming out shortly called, Feature Focus. The repo is available on Github for the Base Camp clone if you are looking to read some code, which is a great way to see what an MVP is. There are no slide available but the course will go over the details of building the Base Camp app.

Something I am looking forward is the interview with DHH and his critque on the code and his recommendations for Carlos. For example there was a method offered called "Tell Don't Ask." The idea is basically to stop writing if statements and begging the language for info, but getting what you need.

For example this is from the Code Schoolrepo. The | | is literally checking the if the result is this or that, this an alternative to writing out an entire if/else statement.

Translation to if/else:

def find_by_target

  if result = User.name
     then this
  elsif result = Product.title
    then that
  else
    nil

end



Let me know if this makes sense or can be better clarified, this a subject I will be doing some research on, for sure posting on more. Really happy I discover this. I am sure there are also better examples of this, please share those too.

!!Bryan - I am taking another look at my goals for 2014

I actually used the double bang (!!example) in actual production code at work. But first, I was taught what it actually does. There are some hang ups with using it, but just keep it use in the back of your mind in case its ever needed. Basically forces a Boolean.

Orlando.js

8 months later after I attended my first meetup, which happened to be at Envy/Code School,  I attended my second meetup there tonight. I told myself I would make it out there again but never did. For one reason its over 2 hours to drive from Tampa with Orlando 9rush hour/disney) traffic, but luckily I now live in Orlando and 2 miles from the Envy office.

I attended the second ever Orlando.js meetup, which make me surprised that there was not one before, since there are 3 Javascript in Tampa alone. Tonights meeting was in detail on OOP in JS. It kind of got me excited to learn more vanilla JS and check out some books, but for the moment I am focusing on getting through these Objective-C and Ember tutorials, but its tempting to jump into more with all these meetups.

There is without exaggeration a meetup happening every week that is programming related and I plan on being at most. I might as well take advantage of the opportunity while I am so close to them.

Goals for 2014

As mentioned before in a post, I wrote some goals out for the year and I had the opportunity to check them out again. I have every intention to complete all by the end of the year, but realize I am behind. However, I did complete the goal of getting a job.

In short I still need to create a tutorial, which I might change to give a talk (since there are so many meetups). I also need to deploy and publish a functional app, which will be Chuych eventually, and finally based on the mention by Daniel during the Ruby Newbie chat; I will be trying to hit a goal of 75 stack overflow questions answered by the end of this year(not necessarily correctly). I needed to start this yesterday.

Well if you have a question for me put it in s/o, I guess...

Lessons Learned from the Code Retreat

This weekend I had the opportunity to attend a Code Retreat put on by the Global Day of Code. I had some reservations about attending this event because of my lack of knowledge in the Ruby Language. I also never attended an event that involved pair programming, but I purposely went with the idea that I was not leaving until I learned something.

For those not familiar, The event's structure was based around "The Game of Life."  and each session was 45 minutes and contain a limitation you had to implement with your pair.

Sessions:

1: No limitation other than pairing:
- I did not do much but watched and talked through the exercise. My pair was very helpful and very informative.

2: Must plan code on paper and then ping pong test:
- My partner did not know Ruby, so we coded in Python (he walked me through the syntax). I now have an appreciation for Python and will more than likely learn more of it down the road. I unfortunately did not learn how to test in Ruby but learned UnitTesting in Python...fascinating stuff.

3: Mute pairing ( testing without talking)
- I finally got to see how Rspec worked but had to learn the hard way without talking to my pair. Luckily my pair was very patient and descriptive in his notes on screen. I was als very confuse with the use of his text editor's vi.

4: Functional Programming (No side effects):
- This session we did not get very far. My pair and I were both new and had to search through the Ruby Docs for info on how to be functional. I still don't quite get it but it is something I can look into later. He also gave me a book he learned back to front called The Well Grounded Rubyist.

5: Code must be no more than 3 lines:
- By this session my brain was pretty wiped and we did not get very far. My pair was very knowledgable and basically went through the exercise making sure I understood the concepts.

Take aways: Just Try It..its ok to fail

I was a bit overwhelmed when I was asked, with no words, to solve a failure in Rspec, I had never seen Rspec previously. I am glad I attended the event and encourage any one reading to take a chance and attend a meetup. Also post your stuff to github and share. If you wait until you are Ruby Master you will miss out on learning from trying. I was able to share my git and everyone was cool with me being new and trying.

I was blown away on how helpful everyone was towards me. I plan to also start posting some ah ha moments as I get learning and figure it out.

Programming Diversity: Ashe Dryden

I had the please sure of attending a Ruby meetup where Ashe Dryden. Ashe speaks around the world on Programming and Diversity. If you are any way in interest in programming you need to read her blog post that gained a lot of notoriety this week, within the industry.

You can find the post at here: The Ethics of Unpaid Labor and the OSS Community

Tampa Ruby Brigade: Impressed

Day 37:

I have had the opportunity to attend the Tampa Ruby Meetup tonight and was quite impressed. I can say I was wrong with my expectation of the lack of a coding community in TB area. There is a community, and though not as large as Orlando's, there are quite a number talented individuals who attend.

I look forward the next meeting which a "coder night." A assignment is given to code and must be completed/attempted and submitted prior to attending. Everyone speaks very highly of it and has encouraged me to try it out. I have until Dec 12th to figure the latest assignment and contribute.

This weekend I plan to have something on Github to share, so watch out for it.