Episode #57

For anyone that watched Seinfeld, it was always famous for being about "absolutely nothing"! I thought that was kind of convenient for this post, because I really do not have a specific topic to write about, but it's been awhile since I've written and I want to try to stay consistent. So I'll just write about a few random things...

First & foremost, hopefully everyone had a wonderful 4th of July weekend! Some of my brothers and sisters came in town to go camping out at Stone Mountain. Thankfully we had nice cool weather for July and it was a very enjoyable trip. Here are a few pics from the trip:

We hiked up Stone Mountain around dusk and I got this picture with the Atlanta skyline in the distant background

View of the water from near our campsite

  My nephew is definitely cooler than yours! This picture is from the Ride the Ducks trip at Stone Mountain and he was not liking the life vest.

Ok so on to a few things development related:

Coding is not like riding a bike

As much as I'm wanting to spend plenty of time working on my coding, I haven't had as much time to dedicate to it as I would like, especially this most recent week while I was out at Stone Mountain. One thing I've learned, if you aren't coding on a daily basis, you FORGET stuff! Things like "for" loops or "do while" loops, and "functions", etc. I learn how to do them, and then go back a week later and forget little tidbits of the syntax. Overall though, I am learning more every day and getting a lot faster on how to structure all of these coding fundamentals. I'm trying to bunker down and spend as much time as possible studying or practicing in one way or another.

Resources I'm using

I've been bouncing back and forth between a few resources lately, but the two most prominent are the work I'm doing on my Rails app, and then working through JavaScript tutorials on CodeAcademy. Overall Code Academy is a great resource for learning syntax; my biggest complaint is that I feel it breaks the problems down too much for you, and doesn't allow you to really push yourself on how to solve a complex problem. I am getting to a few parts in the tutorial where it offers some additional challenges to figure out on your own.

Status of my Rails App

I ran into a hiccup on my App. If you haven't been reading along, rather than doing the e-commerce app in the book, I'm trying to do an app where I can upload recipes I like and then pull them back up at random to help me decide what to make. I realized after the first main section that I was designing the wrong part of my app with their tutorial. I was designing the front end piece that you view the recipes from, whereas I was supposed to be designing the backend storage space where you can "Add, Edit, or Delete" new recipes and it also shows a view of all of the recipes (see snapshot below).

Once I realized the direction they were going, I changed up the CSS so the view would look like the picture above. It's not pretty yet, but a basic view for adding new recipes.

I think what I'm going to do now is dive into CodeAcademy to finish working through the JavaScript tutorial while reading ahead in the Rails book. Once I see how they plan to work through the e-commerce site, I think I'll have a slightly better idea on how to translate it to what I'm trying to do.


Well that's about it for tonight. Once again thanks for reading along!

One step forward...fifteen steps back

Saturday afternoon, world cup is on the tv, and I'm plopped down on the couch with my laptop & book in hand. My dog is fast asleep on the couch, but probably bored and wishing I would play with her instead of having my eyes glued on my laptop! I figured now is as good of a time as any to provide another update...

I've been trying to spend as much time as possible learning how to code and working on my app. As a refresher for anybody that has been reading along, I'm working through the book "Agile Web Development with Rails 4" by Sam Ruby, Dave Thomas, & David Hansson. The book provides an in-depth tutorial in which you create an e-commerce site for a fictional customer. My issue with tutorials is that a bulk of the code you need is already in the book, so I feel it doesn't challenge you as much as I'd like. So I decided to create my own app which will allow you to add & store your favorite recipes online, and eventually I'll add a randomizer to allow you to pick a recipe at random.

I'm really hoping to spend at least 10+ hours a week studying because I'm really enjoying it. I would love to spend more time than that, but I do have a full time job & other activities that keep me pretty busy. However, there is something about typing in a few lines of code, seeing something pop up on your computer screen, and thinking to yourself - "I DID THAT!". In addition, coding involves A TON of problem solving and I always enjoy the rush of finally figuring out something that I've been stuck on!

So that leads me into the main topic of today - I was starting to feel comfortable navigating to different parts of my Rails application and being able to troubleshoot and figure out issues...and then this happened...

Thankfully I recently stumbled across a great group on Twitter called CodeNewbie that has been extremely beneficial! It was started by Saron (@saronyitbarek) and Carlos (@carlosplusplus) and it's a great community of developers and developers in training that are always there to help out. I posted a screen shot and within 15 minutes already had a response from @carlosplusplus!

The answer ultimately ended up being me starting my app over, but I really wasn't that far in and it took me maybe 15 minutes to get everything back to the point I was previously at! Here's a screenshot of the current state of my app from the web browser:

Overall, it's a ton of fun every time I get to sit down and learn a little more about coding, even if it is a step forward and a few steps back sometimes. I'm very fortunate that I get to sit around close to 200 very talented Software Engineers at CareerBuilder and I can ask for help on an almost daily basis.

Hopefully in the very near future I'll have some good updates and screenshots of how my apps coming along. In the meantime, if you have any advice, words of encouragement, or are interested in hearing about a certain topic - please feel free to comment or email me at austi003@gmail.com.  I'm hoping at least one person out there finds this blog interesting or gets some value out of it :)

Gotta start somewhere right?

So over the course of the last two weeks, I haven't quite updated my blog the way I hoped, or had much of a chance to do any significant practice or studying with coding. I did have a nice trip up to Chicago though and got to meet some co-workers and see an old college buddy. Being in Chicago gives me such an itch to pick up and move there as well - I've always been drawn to Chicago & NY.

Anyway, I figured lunch today would be as good as any to type out a few thoughts in between bites. To be honest, today's topic is as much for me as it is for anybody that actually reads along :)  I have an idea for an application I'm going to work on, and wanted to do a "before" post so that six months or a year down the road, I can look back and see where I started. 

I mentioned to a few of the developers that I was interested in learning how to program, and the guys I sit around have a focus towards Ruby on Rails, so they recommended "Agile Web Development with Rails 4" as a good book to follow along with. I actually got the book about a month or two back, and have slowly started working my way through. Through a good chunk of the book, it lets you follow along with building an eCommerce site which they call  the Depot application. However, this past weekend I decided on an idea for a new application that I would try to build while following along with their examples. 

Problem: I prefer to cook healthier options at home, but I never know what to cook

Solution: Just for the fun of it, I want to build a site where I can upload the recipes I like, and then use a random generator to pull recipes. If I can figure out how to do it, I may add in features to choose between Breakfast, Lunch, & Dinner options, or maybe even choose between types of Dishes (i.e. Chicken, Pork, Fish). 

I'm hoping to use some of the same functionality of the Depot project such as adding new products (new recipes). As I begin to progress, I'll upload to github (austi003) if you'd like to follow along or see my code. Hopefully I can get something working, even if it's not the most professional looking! 

At this point, my experience is primarily the classes I took as a CS minor in college, along with 2-3 months of sporadic studying I've been doing, but I wanted to rate myself before I get started:

• HTML/CSS/JavaScript - (4 or 5) - I took a number of classes on HTML/CSS/JS in college, and have probably done the most work here. Especially for HTML/CSS, I know a lot of the basic syntax and can follow along with the code even if I can't write it all off the top of my head. For most projects, I probably know enough that between my knowledge, and using Stackoverflow or a google search, I can figure out how to do what I need to.

• Ruby (1 or 2) - This is the first object oriented language I'm learning, primarily because the developer next to me gave me a problem to solve in Ruby. I've at least started learning about the overall syntax and what methods & classes, & types of variables, etc. At this point, I would still consider myself very basic though. Here is a sample screenshot of my code, and once again you can find it on Github.

• Ruby on Rails (About the same) - I at least understand conceptually the whole MVC concept and hopefully will learn a lot more about Rails as I go

So that's my starting point and level of knowledge, let's see where it takes me! On one quick side note, our quarterly Hack-a-thon at CareerBuilder takes place tomorrow starting at 9 am - I'm working on an idea with two of our engineers and it's my first Hack-a-thon to participate in, so I'm pretty excited! Feel free to follow along on Twitter @cb_Shaun and probably the tags #careerbuilder or #cbhackathon - I'll try to post some pictures and updates throughout the day/night.