Do this before you Bloc

So after I announced my recent employment as a Rails dev, I have been getting a lot of people reaching out to me about Bloc.io and my thoughts on it. I do want to share a video I made the Saturday before my last official day of Bloc. I also want to recommend my mentor Adam if you choose to go with Bloc. I do believe he is always booked up but if you you look now he is available, sign up with him right away if you have already decided to go through the program.

In my latest inquiry email I recommended something that I have not done before, which a simple Todo app. Back in November I completed the OneMonthRails tutorial in two long weekends, which helped me create ilikerobot.com. I then thought I was pretty much king of the world and took on the challenge to create a Todo app. The idea was create the functionality that sent a text when the one task completed. I attempted it using some scaffolding and failed, I then attempted to go through this Turtorial and still failed. If you need proof check out my abandoned repo OmegaPhone, I actually forgot all about this but now want to take on the challenge of completing this app soon.

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My challenge: 
Prior to signing up for Bloc, Tealeaf, etc... Try to create your own Todo app, if that is not possible, Try to go through this Tutorial step by step. If you are able to get through it without getting stuck on errors and actually complete it, you might be a good candidate for a self guided program like Tealeaf. Tealeaf offers a version of office hours(24/7 helpline) but does not have a mentor assigned to you. If you are like I was, struggling through figuring out errors and need that extra guidance, Bloc would be a great program for you.

*Bloc is a great program and I found having a mentor a huge motivator with my learning. My biggest concern with learning programming was not being consistent and eventually giving up. Going through the Bloc program helped me stay consistent, especially because of the price tag associated with it. I also was able to try more challenging things in Rails, because I knew I had a mentor to fall back on and ask questions. Try out this challenge this weekend and let me know how it goes, even if you are not planning on going through a online bootcamp.

I am partial to Bloc, for obvious reason, and found the program to be a great source for adding actual completed projects to my resume(github). With that being said Tealeaf is also a great program, and having a helpline is also good too. Bloc also has something similar which I used heavily on the weekends, but what I found having a specific mentor made it easier to understand the problems. Each time I used Bloc's office hours, I had to explain my app/problem every time, which was fine and helped me really understand my issue, but in some cases I just waited the few hours till my mentor was online again rather re-teach. Having a specific mentor was a great luxury, which considering the time spent it was less than the price of AirPair. If you really hammer down with Bloc you could have 5-6 new apps in your github ready to show in interviews, that are unique from what everyone else is showing.

Also when deciding which program to go through, try to think about what your goals are in learning web development. I had the goal of getting a job, but my main goal was to make my app Chuych. I do know from the interviews I had, most companies like seeing that you worked on a project outside of tutorials. It shows you have a passion to learn and the app I made with the help of my mentor was the app I created with the help of my mentor.

Thanks for reading

Not sure if you saw this, but I did make a video on my last weekend of Bloc

What else is next?

At the time I started to learn Ruby, my son had just arrived home from the hospital. To couple my longs hours of learning, I also had a lot of sleepless nights staying up with him. I planned to spend the hours of 4-7am for Ruby because I already had to get up 330am pretty consistently.

Due to the lack of sleep and absence of free time I discontinued eating healthy and working out.

I will now be taking on a new challenge over the next 10 weeks and its the Focus T25 workout, yes I bought into the hype. A friend work recommended it to me weeks ago, but I had no interested since I did P90x years ago and remember how much work that was.

I am currently about 10lbs heavier than the day my son was born, and only came to this realization recently. Needless to say I need to get back into shape and hard work should not be an excuse for not getting there.

This blog will still be the home of my developing journey, but I will also be adding in little updates on my new challenge. As of today I am 223lbs my goal is to be under 210 again. If I can get a job in Rails in 7 months, I am pretty sure I can lose 13lbs in 10 weeks. The workouts only take 30mins, so it will not be taking much of my Ruby time away and will hopefully give me more energy to program during the day.

What's next?

So I originally started blog and journey to eventually get a job as web developer, and with that accomplished, the obvious question is what's next?

While I was still interviewing with potential employers, I was asked if I would continue to blog and lead the Ruby Newbies. The short answer is yes, although both avenues were meant to gain enough experience to get that job, I feel as if there is obviously more to learn. It would be foolish to quit all this now and go into hiding, but I also know that there be a hire demand for my time as I transition into a new career. My plan is continue the Early Bird and Night edition of Ruby Newbies as well some other projects I have in the back of my mind. This first cohort of Ruby Newbies will conclude the middle of July, but I am already looking at calendar and considering starting from week 1 again early fall.

In addition to my regular learning I will have about 13 days in between the end of my current job and the start of my new Rails job. I have been looking at the Jumpstart Labs tutorials and hope to knock out 2 or 3 before June 17th (start date). I also plan on completing the Well Rounded Rubyist as well as another book. This seems to be a little aggressive, but I am determined to fill in more blanks with my learning prior to starting.

The Move

The new job is located in Orlando and I currently live 30 mins north of Tampa, FL, So it will be quite the transition moving. My family and I spent the weekend checking out the area and have decided on a place to stay which will be 2 miles from work just north of downtown. I currently work 16 miles (my current county is the densest per capita in Florida) from my current job and spend 45-60 mins commuting in a car. Our new place will provide the luxury of a 5 min commute in car or a 15min bike ride. We also have access to the train stations via Metro Orlando, but it seems to only run the weekdays.

I have lived in the Suburbs all my life and very tired of of spending my time commuting. I look forward to living closer to work, which will allow more time with the family. I will be living 7 minutes from the heart of Downtown, which open up opportunities to attend more meetups and meet others in the area, as well as attend local conferences and events.

Deciding to learn Ruby 7 months ago was quite the challenge but it has open up so many more opportunities for me and my family. I am glad I took on this developing journey and hope those reading will also do the same.

*Please note:
I have been getting a lot of inquiries on Bloc and wanted to iterate that Bloc was not only the reason I got a job in Rails development. Bloc is a great program that comes with a price, and I highly recommend, but I also highly recommend to be consistent about your learning. Set aside time to study and make sure this is something you really want to do. Paying 5k help me definitely stay motivated to make sure I did not just throw the money away, which pushed me even hard post Bloc and while interviewing.

Thank for reading and please reach out on Twitter or email. ilikerobot[at]gmail

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.

What I did different

I spent the last 7 months researching how others got hired as a developer without a CS degree. Of course I found Joshua Kemp, but I actually found Josh because of a comment on a blog from Jeffrey Baird on a blog. Jeff is actually from the same area I am and got a job within 6 months and outlines how he did it in his blog. He eventually got a position in New York by email his resume to a meetup group in the area. There are others I have found who "made it," but I wanted to take this post outline what I did, which was sourced from others.

Make yourself public:

It really boggles my mind when I see people want to learn code to eventually get a job but don't have a Github account. Bitbucket is great because it offers free private repos, but you will need public repos. My Github is my resume, I had no experience in the industry. Everything I coded, even tutorials were sent to a repo with a README.md. I actually read a blog from a individual who started within weeks of me, he explained that he was starting code but did not want to make anything public until it was good enough. I hate to break it to you guys, but your code is always going to suck while you are learning. My code still sucks, but my repos show a history of my code getting slightly better. Do not sell yourself short by not making your code public, if you are working main project as I did, with Chuych, make it public. Some of my best code is in Chuych, because it is something close to my heart and I cared about it. If I hid it because the code was bad or because I thought someone was going to steal my idea (which most likely will not happen, because the code is not that great) I would not have anything to talk about in my interviews.

If you have no experience and you are just now entering into your journey, push your repos to Gihub, its one of the best things I did... rant over, But this actually leads me to my next rant though.

Blog: 

Write a blog and be consistent about it. I completed the Bloc program back in March, but when I started there was very little info on the program. I searched quora, reddit, google, etc. and there was no one out there I could reach out to about the program, except the people I was paying and I did not want to be sold on it, I wanted an honest opinion. I took it upon myself to make this blog a very vocal place on my experience with Bloc for that reason and countless people have reached out to me on the program. Now the information is a little more available, and the program has exploded into other apprenticeships outside of Rails, but I have also made a lot of valuable friendships because I blogged on Bloc.

In addition to my Bloc blogging, I obviously wrote on my other experiences which actually made it heaps easier for hiring managers and HR recruiters to set you apart from others. Think about this, there is a clear need for Rails developers, but there is a lot of avenues for people to get those jobs. What makes different from the other person if both of you completed the Hartl tutorial or completed X bootcamp? You have to stand out in some way and that is your blog, twitter, and G+. I am not planning on making my entire story public as of yet, but there were other companies interested in me, which I let know of my decision on Monday. One of the two actually got wind of my story prior to me reaching out. I was very vocal on the Facebook and G+ communities, as well as received retweets on Twitter from notable people in the community. My name was out there, even though it was a small name, I was stoke when the companies being mention said they remember seeing me here and there. The Ruby Community is smaller than you think and you have an opportunity to help set its course in the next few years, be vocal because you never who is listening. 

Also don't get hung up writing the best post ever when you first start, because nobody will read it. Just write, I wrote a lot about my decision of choosing to code, because it helped validate me in doing this. I also stayed consistent in writing on set dates, which also pushed me to code soI would have something to write about.

Apply Yourself:

When I applied to the 5 initial jobs, my goal was to gain experience on interviewing. My background is in sales, so I have no problem with rejection which is another reason why I found it so easy to be public about everything. When I was looking for my first round of interviews I knew I had to get my goal of 3 interviews by the end of April, so I first created a simple resume but did not put too much time into it. I just looked a other descriptions and added the information that was relevant to me. I then applied to a few jobs online. *FYI, you are not going to find your first job applying online. You 1/1000 people applying for that one job and chances are slim that you have experiences that jumps off the page, but its still worth a try. What I wish I did for all the jobs I applied to online, and its what I did for the job I got, is reach out to someone in the company. Today a lot of influential people that are very public on Twitter and blogs, just reach out to them directly and they will probably appreciate it enough to grant you an interview.

I emailed the CEO of the company I am now working for, it is kind of bold, but it leads me to my point, What makes you different from everyone else who did the same tutorial you did? I actually reach ed out on Twitter first and then applied online, but received no answer after a week. I then emailed and received an interview the next day! I highly recommend following up on every application this way, but don't become annoying, because as I said the community is small.

Make Friends:

I do not have a single friend in Ruby that I had previous to my journey, I actually don't think most of my friends knew I was pursuing a career in Rails until yesterday when I posted it on Facebook. I actually kept this blog for 7 months and only 1 close friend actually read it, which is fine because the purpose for this blog was to get a job and it succeeded. My point is find others who are going through the same journey and befriend, it could be awkward, they could be in a different country, but the friends you make today could be the door to job you get in 7 months.

Within 2 weeks of me deciding to learn programming I used completed a few sections of Rails for Zombies and found out that Code School was located in Orlando (90 minutes from my house). I also discovered what a meetup was saw they met one Thursday out of the month. I drove out there after work that Thursday and met Greg and Olivier was blown away how cool the office and everyone was. That night actually met 2 of my future coworkers who told me about the company I now work for. At the time they were the only 2 Rails developers in the company and were looking for people to hire. They mentioned the job, but I obviously only had 2 weeks of experience and was not interested in moving 90 minutes from my house (I hate commuting). Fast forward to 6 months later and I ran into them again at Ancient City Ruby, where they again mentioned the job. At this point I was looking to interview anywhere, just for the experience. That is only one story of a connection I made, and this blog is getting a tad bit long winded so I will stop there but just check out the previous I made and you will see my friends listed at the bottom.

During the intro to Ruby Newbies I make it a point to put my info out there, so anyone can connect with me. There are about 100+ Ruby Newbies that participate, but only about 4 people I talked on a regular basis. I need more friends, so join me on Ruby Newbies, even just to hang out, I don't mind. Reach out and ask me questions, some things I dont think to write about just because I don't have time, but there might be something I could that could be beneficial to you getting a job.

My goal for the Ruby group is to have a place where new Rubyst can connect and stay connected, as well as learn Ruby, but I have quite got that connected aspect yet, which is why the project is open sourced. My idea is to maybe start a Ruby partner program where people can connect and pair together on problem sets, but more on that to come.

I wasn't kidding about writing a book (long blog post) I will be writing about my failures tomorrow. This will week will probably be blog posts summarizing my experiences learning and getting a job as a Rails developer.

Thanks for reading and feel free to leave a comment

Hired in Week 29

As I write this post it is week 30 of my journey in learning and I have completed 570 hours of my developing journey. I started keeping track of my code about 2 weeks in after reading the book No Degree No Problem by Josh Kemp. After reading the entire book, at work, I created this blog.

In the book Josh mentions that he learned Rails in 8 months of learning how to code on his own to then land a job as a Junior Developer with only 827 hours of learning. In addition to writing this blog I also created a coding log in a Google Doc and recorded every hour I used to learn Ruby. I named the spreadsheet 827 hours as a reminder that I needed to push myself to get at least 3 hours per day in learning, so much that some weekends were consumed code review  and error debugging. My goals was to have a Jr developer position within 1 year, October 31,2014 and was later changed to May after I completed Boc.

As of Friday I received an offer for a full-time Rails position at a company in the state I am in and it took 568 (7months) hours to do it. *I do not mention the amount hours because of competition, but to put in perspective that anyone can do this. I worked 40+ a week and put in 35 hrs a week coding.

No more sales, Now more rails was my tweet earlier today, Because I will now be spending 40 hours a week writing code and not dreaming about it while doing sales. I hope to continue to push myself past that "senior" level position into something pretty awesome.

*This blog is about 5 times longer and was starting to look like a book. I will be breaking it into multiple blog posts and have them released separately, so subscribe to the RSS or my Twitter to get the full developing story of how I got my first dev job.


Thanks and Attributions in no particular order:
@madibird
@bnlson
+horvathlg
@ashfinator
+Erik Trautman
TheOdinProject
@trybloc
+Adam Louis
@AncientCityRuby
@jdotvazquez
@joshuakemp01
@surgerunner
@onemonthrails
@jterrell
@hopefulwebdev
@kiy_tang
@_russellb
@Allolex
@ByENNEN
@kytrinyx
@thedevme
Tampa Ruby Brigade
@jesus
@parndt
+everyone who reads this blog!
...I am sure there are more, but I could not make it this far without the encourage and support I got from you.

If anyone is interested hearing more of my story, I might do another Q&A on Youtube or Reddit, if there is enough interest.

Getting some great experience

As of today I not heard back from my final interview last week. I will be reaching out to follow up.

In the meantime I have been working with the Ruby Newbies on the building blocks problem set. The problems are not too difficult and great practice in solving problems using code. I have found that problems from Code Wars and Hacker Hands are great but slightly difficult. I hope once this 10 week study group is over I will be able complete those problems with ease and only have to worry about refactoring.

I am also working through the CS169 course, which I am loving. The course is laid to really take a newb to the next level. the other part that is great is the pairing aspect. I woke up Saturday morning and joined up with some other guys randomly. We actually completed the majority of the problems within that 3 hour problem set, all before my son woke up. We are scheduled the same time this week at 6am my time, if you would like to watch.

I am in my 30th week of learning and although I hoped to be farther along and already moved into front end developing, I am happy at my progression and the connections I have made. So many people have been very helpful and I amazed how willing everyone is to assist. *I will eventually learn Javascript, but I am really enjoying Ruby more than ever.

Speaking of which I threw up a RubyNewbies.org site and have been getting great feedback on it. In addition +horvathlg has done an amazing job working on the front end of the site. My hope is to eventually have a single space to recommend people to Ruby Newbies and the Odin Project. I was finding it a little daunting distributing 5 links every time I open a meeting recording.

Also special thanks to @parndt who also submitted a pull request.

*side note I have put my MBA on hold indefinitely. I might revisit it at the end of the summer, but at this point I need the extra time getting into more advanced Ruby.