2nd week in Orlando

I just concluded my second week in Orlando and finally settled in. My goal is to provide shorted updates on the thing I am learning at the new job. I am actually spending less time at home home coding and learning, as my focus has been more on family and getting settled. I plan to at least get 2-3 hours a day at home.

I have began working on iOS and Objective-C, which was challenging at first. Unlike Ruby, Objective-C has a lot of boiler plate code, which I keep leaving out. I am looking forward to seeing what Swift has to offer, it seems simpler and less boilerly.

I have yet to complete my first addition to the project at work due to another issue for the release taking the majority of my time, but I am however one integration test away from a pull request. Coding and learning legacy takes a ton of time, and I wish spent more time reading code than writing code (luckily I still can).

I do want to point out that for everyone spending countless hour on getting everything perfect and making sure they understanding everything before proceeding with the next step, which applying  to jobs or completing your personal app, take a look at an article I found - What I Wish I Knew as a Junior Developer. Excepting that everything wasn't going to be perfect and I wasn't going to know everything was the reason I applied to IZEA and took a chance.

I still do not know everything and feel as if I know "nothing" (sometimes) at work. I wish I could summarize everything new I learn at work each day, but that would take entirely too much time. I hope my willingness to learn and do not mind asking questions, will keep me moving forward and able to share more.

On that note I have signed up for all tech meetups in the Orlando area. I am looking forward to connecting with more people outside of Ruby -- all of my Tampa friends, check out FrontEndOrlando. It is organized by a colleague of mine and the content pairs well with what I already know in backend programming.

I also still plan on working through the Ember tutorial, more than likely next weekend.

*Thanks for reading and please keep in touch. @brianllamar

git stash and git flow is a thing

I have known about Git Stashing for awhile, but cant say I have properly used it, ever. I am now at the point at work where I am working on multiple things at once and needed to switch to a more pertinent issue in time for the Monday release. Git stash is a great tool to save your work without committing it, great for if you are in the middle of solving/building and not at an ideal stopping point to switch to somethings else.

I have heard that you should complete a commit unless its a complete thought. It makes it hard to follow commits when they are incomplete. Next time you find yourself at a an inopportune time, then use git stash. A more detailed explanation is here

It also helps when you need to switch to another branch without committing or losing your work ;)

*This has been a git filled week of post

I also mentioned git flow which is a great tool to automate some basic git commands. I have used it since day one here at IZEA and love its magic. The automation creates Jira tickets, open branches, and even closes and merges to master. Pretty amazing stuff, check it out.

*So much for all the practice spent working on my personal git workflow.

Git Cherry-Pick

Cherry-picking since day 1 at the new job. I learned this cool tool which has been a life saver while navigating my way through the new code base. I never had had the opportunity to use it previously, actually a lot of the cool git functionality I didn't use previously. Working on your own projects is completely different on collaborating on a project together with others. For example, when I was working on Chuych, I committed everything to master and rarely made branches unless I planned to break something.

git cherry-pick is a tool to copy specific commits from different branches with ease. I completed a fix to the app at work last work but realized I referenced the wrong ticket number within my commits and branch. The workflow is to use Jira to keep track of User Stories and Fix Tickets. Jira helps track how well the team is doing in the most current Sprint.

My error was discovered by a colleague reviewing my pull request. My initial though was to close the pull request and start over, but was given the opportunity to cherry-pick. If you look in github at a project, each commit has a unique id which can be called within the same project. The fix involved me creating a new branch and calling 'git cherry-pick <unique commit id> (its important to know you must cherry-pick from top to bottom, since each commit succession may be dependent on each other)

It as as simple as that and all my code transferred over without the need to start completely over. I am told cherry picking is not used as often but its great to know of this feature if needed. If you have been working on your own projects for awhile and have not contributed an open sourced project, I recommend the Odin Project. You will have the opportunity to use tools like 'git fetch' 'git pull' and even 'git cherry-pick' if necessary. Get out there and work with a team on something.

As I learn new tools I will be sharing them on the blog, so please subscribe or follow me on Twitter for updates.

PSA: update your git

I have been ignoring the below this message every time I 'git push'(ed) a project ti Github. I finally took the the time to read it and set my default to get rid of the message. Git has updated 2.0, within the last 3 months?, and requires you to be a little more verbose when pushing.

You can set you default by typing 'git config --global push.default simple' in the command line. More info on why is here. You can also use 'git push origin master'

Back on track and finally done moving

I have spent the last week trying to become acclimated to the new job as well move all my stuff from Tampa to Orlando. The good news is most of my colleagues have expressed that it will be 2-3 months before I am truly comfortable with the code base, so I will take it one day at a time.

I have also finally finished all my stuff from my old place, which had me in Tampa longer than expected. My hope is to get back on track with Ruby Newbies and my personal development journey.

A new task I have recently taken on is the some low level QA testing for Bloc. I will begin my work this week going through their iOS curriculum, making this the instruction is clear and free of typos, I planned on starting Saturday,but my Tampa trip went longer than expected. I am truly honored that to be a part of the team. The testing will not take too much time out of my day and I plan to learn Objective-C and Swift while doing it, so look out for some post in regard to that.

Well that is all, happy coding.

My first day and my baby steps

The has finally come, my first day of work is complete and I have to admit, I was very nervous coming into a field without any professional experience.

My expectation however was low that I would get to touch any code and did indeed spend most of my day setting up my environment, but to my surprise I was assigned a few issues and even submitted my first pull request.

I spent the morning installing my environment with the same README that I was unable to follow on my own while on vacation. I found there were a lot of hidden quirks and shortcuts that only made sense after I received the proper explanation of what the app does. After that explanation, it was shocking how similar the setup was to the Odin Projects, minus the use of foreman.

Today was a mind meld and I was expose to a lot awesome Ruby/Rails tools that I have not been as of yet. I have also not had the pleasure of setting up my environment without the use of a one-click Rails Installer.

The issues I solved were completed in the with very few code and more like baby steps for me to get comfortable with the code base. I am really enjoying this approach and looking forward to getting to know each other. Today I spent about 8 hours at my computer; to put it in perspective, I spent 549 hours learning on my own. I will now gain that much time in the Rails in 12 business days. It makes me smile just thinking about it.

*I learned some new skills that I will be sharing later. I don't I am at the place to explain how to them but will during the ladder part of the week. One cool thing was the use of Git Flow, but I will save my explanation for a later post.

Getting back on the grid

I spent the last week hanging out with some family in Nashville and Kansas City. It has certainly been lots of fun and with that being said, I am looking forward to spending more time with my family, thanks to this new job.

So that means I basically did not complete any of the task I planned to complete, but I guess that is why they call it vacation.

Total time logged is barely 5 hours for this week, I decided to reorganize my learning to allow more time with the family. My son is about a month away from being into everything, which is why I am looking forward to having the time to chase him around. I spent 7 months spending 3-6 hours a day learning Ruby and will now spend 8 hours a day writing in Rails.

This is definitely not a time for me to put my feet up and relax. I have been ultra aggressive in learning and only downshifting from 6th gear to 4th gear. I do however have a feeling I will be going back up in speed. I am in talks to do some pretty cool things and look forward to continue to make connections and opening doors.

I will be blogging about my first week at the the job this coming week and also resume the Ruby Newbies the following Monday. I am still in disbelief that this is really happening and very appreciative of the opportunity.

Thanks for reading and if you have not, check out Ruby off Rails.