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Friday, March 28, 2014

By Monday this Chuych Design will look much better


I wish was a design expert but I am not. Thanks to a good chat with Afshin  I have an idea of what to do about it.



Thursday, March 27, 2014

Still Focused on Ruby. Passively taking offers for jobs

I am off to a great start to my learning this week. I have struggled in the past 2 weeks with getting more than 14 hours of learning per week. Previously I was waking up at 4am every morning and working 3 hours. That unfortunately has not been as easy and I am now just sleeping through my alarms, I was also going to sleep at 9pm every night. I am now just focusing on staying up at night and working 9-12pm which has been more successful. I also get 3 uninterrupted hours focused on learning.

This week I have multiple things I am focusing on:

Hartl Chapter 3 & 4
Test First Ruby
Chris Pine Chapter 9 & 10
Also anything that can help me with the design for Chuych.

I working different tracks of the Odin project simultaneously and looking forward to Ancient Ruby the next week. I attending one day in advance for the Refactoring Ruby workshop. I am nervous and excited for it and hoping to walk away with a better understanding of lang. I am also going network my way into as many Rubyist's mindshares.

On the job front:

I am doing very well in my day, so much that I am able to afford things like Bloc and Ancient Ruby. I am now passively looking for Junior Dev/Apprenticeship opportunities. My dilemma is I now make around 15k less than a Junior dev in NY of SF, so I really need to transition into a role that is comparable in salary or take an apprenticeship where I can make that within 3 months.

I am also considering doing sales within a startup in hopes to easily transition into the industry.

My thoughts have changed no that I am on the other side of Bloc, but I am the main breadwinner in my family and have to make sure my next move makes sense.

If you are looking to build a ruby gem. @brandonhilkert just released his book this morning. Pick it up to help him out.

Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Nesting Routes and Learning Basic Ruby again

Chuych

I spent a good amount of last week working on a error with nesting my routes in the Chuych App. I had a goal of making every user submit a post associated with/without a church, but my other goal was to make the app a minimal viable product. I have decide to nest my route post route in my church route. This makes sense with the association of post to churches. I have also gave up on the idea that anyone can make a general post. I will revisit that later when I have time, my main focus is getting the app complete.

My was due to me not properly calling the nested posted in the church/show.rb



My only task that need completing are the implementation of gmaps for rails and markers, as well as everything Front End. I will most likely just update the app with some bootstrap, my attempt to include the Amoeba template did not implement very clean. I plan to strip out all the assets today and start from scratch.


Ruby Newbies

I have began scheduling a regular Weekend Hangout. The focus will be on Ruby and actually solving real problems in Ruby. I applied to an apprenticeship a month ago only to find out I could not create a Tic Tac Toe app in Ruby without searching extensively in Google. I could get the basics of building the Tic Tac Toe board and a move but that took me 3 weeks.

My goal for the group is get through the Chris Pine Learn to Program Exercises. I have spent a focus on learning Rails, I now need to re-focus on Ruby and solving simple problems.

Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Started Python and hopefully pairing

Python

I began an Intro to Programming course this week and the focus is actually on Python. I am not sure if I mentioned this before but my wife has one class to complete her Associates degree at our local community college. She has been taking photography classes up until my son was born, but took off last semester. She has no interest in going back to school now my son is here, and I don't blame her, he is pretty awesome. I offered to take her last class for her and chose this course. This should be fun since I have never had a formal programming class and have already breezed through the material.

I have also breezed through the Python Course on Codecademy. I heard how similar Python is compared to Ruby, so far I have seen no differences. Python is sensitive to whitespace and is the only difference I have seen thus far.

On the Ruby Front

I had to cancel my Ruby meetup on Monday due to the lack of time I have spent on Ruby. I went from waking up at 4am every morning to waking up at 6am after Bloc ended. I am enjoying sleeping, but it seems I will need to start waking up earlier. Last week I barely hit 14 hours which is almost half of what I did my best week.

I plan to meet new people this week and the coming and conduct some pairing sessions. The Odin group has proven to be very valuable to meeting new individuals learning Ruby.

My focus for the next few weeks will be on learning Ruby, specifically solving problems. Since the Ruby Newbie's inception, I have not had a clear idea on what the focus will be. I have now decided that is will focus on learning Ruby. primarily learning through code quizzes and group book reviews.

I feel that I now have decent skills in Rails and need to focus more on Ruby in order build on my proficiency.

Please join me on Odin and RN if you are looking to learn too.

ruby, pair

Monday, March 17, 2014

The Odin Project: Open Sourced Learning





Week 21 of learning web development has now been completed. Its really did go by quick.



During the 12 weeks of Bloc I focused specifically learning rails and working through a small portion of Ruby. I also spent about 25+ hours a week learning through the Bloc curriculum. '

Well after much consideration and planning I have decided to cut that time down to the minimum of 15 hours a week. Last week I barely hit 14 hours, due to me also being behind in work and my Business Law course. I spent a good portion of my time on the Chuych app where I ran into nesting issues with my routes. I also implement mail chimp to begin making a mailing list for the beta. I have yet to do anything on the front end and have learned quite a bit through Dash from General Assembly.

I also cannot recommend the Odin project enough. Its a pretty inclusive rails app for all things web development. The web development meeting was cancelled for last night, but I did attend the Rails group. I am looking forward to using my learning time working through this curriculum and hopefully meeting some new developers.

The site is also open sourced and has a few todos on Pivotal Tracker. I am looking forward to potentially contributing to project, eventually.


Wednesday, March 12, 2014

I think I might start a real business. Or at least a business email

I have been strategically taking up the Chuych name in different places on the internet, and although this is not specifically learning Ruby, I would like to share. I am trying to stray away from creating a bunch of social media profiles in replace of an actual app, but I could't help but create a Twitter account in preparation.

I really plan on make my capstone project into a full fledge app for the world. I am really liking some of the ideas I have on it, but I am really trying to stay close to the MVP at launch (Easter). I plan to be my own street and do some life growth hacking to ramp up the user base. On the other hand I do realize there is a chance that my first ever app has a chance to fail and trying to be conservative as possible in spending money towards this as of yet. 

I did however spend 4 bucks on hover to get the hello@chuych.com email, so my devise emails do not come from my personal email. I am completely ignorant when it comes to domain names and DNS hosting, but creating a forwarding email was easy and cheap.

I have always wanted to this and this finally gave me a reason to. It was only a two step process:

      1. I believe most Domain companies have email creation, but if yours doesn't, I recommend Hover.com. I super excited in giving out hello@chuych.com and also mail@briandouglas.me. 

      2. I use gmail, which I did not know you could change your "email from." Instructions on how to do this is here.

I plan on not only finishing my capstone app, but also plan learning how to build the brand of Chuych to ensure it's success. Based on some of the things I have been learning from Pat Flynn, I have created a blog and plan to keep that up on a weekly basis as well as keep up to my 3 times a week quota on this blog (my personal goal).


Tuesday, March 11, 2014

Discovered and Starting the Odin Project

I took a bit of a break over the weekend with learning. I spent time with my family and got a new couch. It was nice to not have the pressure of a personal deadline.

Well that did not last long, since I have now discovered the Odin Project. This project is actually something I found a month ago and ignored. I followed the Google plus group but did not really follow, but that changed on Sunday night when I was cruising the internet and saw a notification for a Hangout on Air Sunday night.

Apparently this group is doing what I would eventually like to get to with the Ruby Newbies group. The group has a curriculum and each week they meet to go over the assignment. They also have opportunity for pairing through out the week.

Sunday marked week 1 of the Rails project group, but the also a Wed Dev 101 group going on at he same time. Meeting times are on Sunday and Wednesday Evening.

If you have any interest in learning check out the Odin curriculum. They have done a good job laying out what you need to learn and its free.

I have begun this week's assignment, which is the blog app by Jumpstart Labs. I also started Dash and HTML and CSS Codecademy, per the the Web Dev 101 coursework. I have a strong need to learn Front-End Design and hopefully Odin will get it done with me.


Saturday, March 8, 2014

My final impressions on Bloc and ongoing journey

12 weeks ago I started Bloc with high expectations of learning Ruby on Rails and being equipped to build my own web apps as I pleased. My hope was to also begin applying and interview for entry level developer positions and gin employment by this summer. My original goal is was set for October of 2014 to make the career change.

So what do I think now?

I highly recommend Bloc if you have an idea for your capstone prior to signing up. If you are only learning Ruby just to learn Ruby there are other programs out there. Bloc's focus is on learning how to learn, which is interesting for an approach. I am no where near Ruby expert and barely know the "programming." I no have the ability solve problems using Ruby, but I will most likely fail a programming test in an interview. I don't completely discourage using Bloc to learn the Ruby language but the focus is on web development and a lot of concepts in the language are overlooked with the use of Rails.

I do also only recommend Bloc if you can dedicate 3 hours a day to learning. I started the beginning of the program with no issues with my time dedication and easily over exceeded my time commitment. I did get promoted at work which requires more of my time and required me to travel to Costa Rica during the latter part of Bloc. I was very dedicated to completing my web app that week, but still was delayed due to the spotty internet and travel delays.

With that being said, having a mentor exponentially increased my knowledge base quicker than I could have ever done on my own with the same time restrictions and job promotion. I do believe without Bloc I would not have been as dedicated towards, most likely because I paid a lot of money to do complete the program. Because of Bloc I was able to create 4 apps in 3 months and learn things like how to work with API's and useful gems like acsts_on_taggable and pry.

I am an outsider looking into the world of programming and now have a better understanding on where to go for continual learning.

I recently took a programming test for an apprenticeship and the guidelines were to finish 3 problems in less than 45mins, I solved one problem in about 50mins. I have a lot to learn in the Ruby language and look forward to working through the books I have acquired. My background is in sales and that is what I do for a living, In sales its all about "at bats." The more attempts you get to hit, the better chance you have at succeeding. The same is in play for learning programming, it's all about how many attempts you have.

I remembering finishing my initially finishing my Bloccit app, I completed it while carefully reading their step by step tutorial, I still felt inept when my mentor laid out the guidelines for approaching my next project without a tutorial. When I completed Taskoff I felt accomplished in completing that app in less than 25 hours of work. The majority of the app was completed on my own within 2 days. A month earlier I attempted to create a similar task app and failed even after following a provided tutorial and referencing OMR.

So back to Bloc's "learning how to learn:

I can not complete an app without the use the Google and I can't solve Ruby problems without referring to my previous projects, but I am confident within a year I will be solving beginner problems without the use of reference material. My hope is very confident in Ruby by this summer.

What's Next:

To my surprise my mentor expressed to me that he would like to still assist with my capstone project. He found my approach to this idea rather intriguing and would like to see the completion of it. He provided his personal email and recommended reaching out via Skype anytime I need help and pair program. I looked forward to the continual learning from his knowledge and completing this app in the next few weeks. At this point it is in its "Minimal Viable Product" form, but I would like to add a few extra features and front-end design prior to opening it up to an Alpha.

I have applied to a few apprenticeships and working on the prep work. I plan to complete my applications to those in the next 2 weeks and to keep my options open I have also applied to a junior developer position out of state.

The Unlikely Developer gained employment within only 8 months, I hope to eventually gain employment, but also hope to build Chuych into a viable business. I have been greeted with excitement when I explain the concept to others and look forward to having real people use it. I understand if this is any bit of a success I will need to devote more time to scalability planning for the app. I dislike my current job and love the opportunity to sell a product I created to churches across the country (I have not yet announce my business plan, but stay tuned).

Thank you for reading my thoughts, I look forward to my continual journey and pursual towards becoming a junior developer.

*FYI, after my first app within Bloc, I change my bio from "Aspiring Web Developer" to "Web Developer." Although I am not best I am a developer with multiple apps completed. I recommend you do the same if you have done the same.


Use Vagrant to install Ruby on Windows

Vagrant/Microsoft presentation

A month ago I attended a meetup the speaker spoke on installing Ruby on windows using vagrant. I have not had the opportunity to use Ruby on windows but I hear its pretty difficult getting up and running.

The windows computer I use is my work laptop is my work computer and I have no plans installing vagrant or ruby on that but I thought I should share this to anyone interested.


Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Wrapping up Bloc, Ramping up my side project

I have been a little more infrequent with my post due to me trying to focus all my efforts on completing the minimal viable product for Chuych. I have implemented a lot of new things I have yet to user previously, such as Geocoder and a jQuery plugin called geocomplete.

During my very first meeting with my mentor, he explained that he was going to teach how to learn. I feel that is exactly what we have accomplished. I have progressed past getting stuck on simple debugging issues to actually implementing new features with limited guidance.

One of the best things I have learned to do is, "Just try it out." There is no longer a fear of breaking the app since it is now embraced as a new learning exercise to fix it.

I look forward to spending the time after Bloc really learning Front End design, something I have not really put a focus on.

*I am hosting Google Hangout Saturday, to discuss my impressions on Bloc and more details on what I plan to do after.