San Francisco's got Seoul

It's 2013, and B is in San Francisco! Learning to Program at App Academy

[binnieinsf]

w8d2: day 2 of solitary meditation

That is kinda what it feels like. At first peer programing felt so weird. But now, working solo feels foreign. I’m deep in my zone sometimes, I forget to blink or go to the bathroom. I can see how people get carpal tunnel.

Today, I refactored much of my code so I used partials and don’t repeat myself as much as I can. I also confirmed what I learned about nested resources. I had a small glitch in the afternoon due to actionmailer and launchy acting out. It took so long to figure out. But it was such a stupid bug. My directory was in a file with a space in its name. I didn’t even know it was in that file!

Lessons of the day include:

Nested resources can be cutomized so you have some view files as nested and some outside of the nesting.

Buttons for any modification! So that GoogleBot doesn’t delete all your pages.

Algorithms. Dynamic Arrays. I kinda feel like I get it. But I probably don’t.

Gotta pick it up. I’m miles behind where I want to be by the middle of the project. Not to mention I haven’t started styling it at all.

[binnieinsf]

w8d1: Our own projects!

Today was very zen.

We finally started our last two weeks. We are working on our own ideas of the rails project. I know I left you all on a cliff hanger… so SURPRISE!

I’m making a Dress Share app. It’s kind of like Air BnB but for formal dresses. I hope it actually takes off at Dartmouth. It’s a legitimate issue I am addressing. I hope I can make the campus a bit greener and more fashionable by utilizing the thousands of campus we have on site! Hopefully users will be reassured by rent and deposit and what not so they are willing to let people borrow their dresses.

On a technical note, we learned about devise and omniauth. It’s interesting to learn about devise AFTER leraning how to write our own auth. I think it’s worthwhile that we know what cookie, sessions are. We know how we would write current_user by hand or how to authenticate user just using bcrypt instead of relying on devise. It makes things look less magical so that I know exactly what’s going on with my users models.

Omniauth would be exciting once I get a good handle on it. I hope to use it for my next final project so that users can incorporate facebook into it.

Yay making our own projects! I’m already quite proud.

[binnieinsf]

w7d4: More JQuery and Ajax

Continuing the weeks of JS we are building on our JQuery and Ajax skills. We finished up JS by building an key bound asteroids game that renders in a browser beautifully.

In our next step improvements to our CRUD app, we had worked on up down button as well as favoriting buttons in our rails app. So we put the rails backend and JS front end together. It was nice to have a single page feature through Jquery and ajax requests which made our app much more seamless.

Today, we stepped up a notch on our level of integration and started making a checkout app. Cart that was associated with a user was constantly displayed in the applications layout. The cart contained products but displayed the products neatly by quantity and total price. We left off at the end of the day trying to add products to the cart from the product page. It’s reassuring how we can now somehow realize these difficult concepts in a web application form. Who would have thought I could learn to make an online checkout store just like that.

For the next two weeks, we have to make our own rails projects. I think I have a really cool idea that I would like to finish and actually push it live on Dartmouth’s campus. It’s something I feel passionate about and I think people will actually get a lot of use out of it. But I’m not spilling the beans on what it is until next week!

[binnieinsf]

w7d1: deeper JS

I can’t believe we’re almost done with the program. I have learned so much in the last seven weeks, it almost feel like I shouldn’t be considered a same person. Its kind of like how rake db:rollback doesn’t really work at this point because your model has progressed so much.

Biggest things I have trouble with right now is the function constructors and the concept of this. We usually use a little trick of defining var that = this in the beginning of our bigger function so we can always know what we are calling on. But the intricacies of multiple layers get hazy and confusing quickly.

We started integrating Rails with JS. It worked seemlessly. It’s cool to see how things are coming together. We can now user rails for our MVC stuff and basic structure and add some jazz with JS and JQuery. We can do ajax requests to display more (get) or make new associations (post). Now that we have many languages to play with, it gets a bit mindblowing. I keep wanting to semicolon at the end of every code in Ruby and .each do end in JS.

Hopefully brushing up on the JS readings Ned posted will get all the confusing wrinkles straightened out.

[binnieinsf]

w6d1, w6d3, and w6d4: enter Javascript

We left the land of friendly fashionable Ruby and Rails and embarked on Javascript. Since it was created in ten days or so (according to Brandon Eich)

At first it was painfully annoying to switch to the javascript ways. We eased our way into it through some algorithms and basic games (like the ones we learned ruby with in weeks 1 and 2.) Often we ended up with this.board.board.location. Or something horridly long and confusing. That’s probably more a fault of us not refactoring. But generally the concept of “this” made js a bit less friendly. Unlike Ruby’s classes, it was harder to keep tabs on what “self” was. Not to mention all the {} and ; made keeping tabs of syntaxes very hard on the eyes.

But after a day or two, we got used to the js way of defining objects (with all hashes. ) We then learned jQuery and DOM manipulation. The level of power it gives is magical. I can’t believe I can just have it read and play with the html elements or change the css or hide and show buttons. I’m excited to see how that will make our rails app even more powerful.

[binnieinsf]

w5d4: Independently made Rails App!

Yesterday and today, I have been making my own rails application. I got super into it. I'm very attached. It's kind of like my baby. I keep thinking of how to make it better. Feature wise and code wise.

My app is a dress sharing app for Dartmouth students. I created validations to check and only allow Dartmouth emails to sign on. I also made small parts of web applications more sophisticated. For instance in the application controller, I check for whom the current_user is and whether or not the user is logged in. So the app is overall more secure. You can only add and edit dresses if you're signed on and the dresses are your own. It also automatically signs you on if you just signed up for DressShare.

I also implemented all types of forms. I started using form_for and then switched to simple_form_for. Simple_form_for has very interesting and easy to use options. For instance, I had to make two new tables and models to make a many to many relationship between dresses and body types. (It's like a Tag to Article relationship.) I could make the user associate the body type with dress by having the dress's simple_form_for's association. Simple_form_for was also easy to use with bootstrap. I could simply select the options of check_boxes or radiobuttons and automatically it formatted things to look nicely. 

I'm glad I chose to add challenging and more complicated features even though it meant that I would have to deal with more stuff in order to call the application done. I think that made the app more usable and valuable for the user. 

For instance, I actually was inspired to make this app because my sorority has been emailing about how we should have a GoogleDoc of dress sharing information. But it would be so much better if I actually make a full scale web application. I have certified users and secure authentications. I have the users owning dresses and editing and adding dresses. They can even post pictures. I hope I can get done fast (I still need edit pages for controllers) and update it to be more smartphone friendly.

[binnieinsf]

w5d3: authentication and rails TDD

As we delve more and more into the authentication related projects, I have had to think a lot about how safe things are. Everything is.

It's weird to think about. Our own version of authentication did not have ssl layer so when I sent in the params for logging in, it included my password in PLAIN TEXT! Then I got scared because there must be many many apps out there who not only pass in the params in plain text and display it (which isn't that bad, because you can make it hidden and it's pretty secure) but actually store the password into the database as plaintext!! It freaked me out. Hmm. It might be time to purchase One Password.

Tdd: a la rails.

You can test rail projects just as you would ruby projects. Two most important things to test are models and integrations. Models rspecs are pretty straightforward. For integration, you make a fake user interact with your app via capybara. FactoryGirl also makes model testing and integration testing easier because it will make fake objects in whichever class you specify. 

 I think TDD is almost more important in rails. You don't want your app to fail while the users are interacting. So testing is even more important. 

Handy gems for your toolbox.

[binnieinsf]

w5d1: sessions hash and authentication

On Monday, we learned about the sessions hash. 

Sessions hash will automatically store things to be accessed in all of your controllers. Vice versa, anyone (controller) can set anything in session. It's where we stored current_user information or session authentication_code.

Super useful for loggin in and logging out.

[binnieinsf]

w4d5: mass_assignment errors

I wrote a few things down about what I would put up on my blog but since being sick in the past few days, I've been out of my tumblrsphere.

So catching up!

MassAssignment is dangerous.

We protected ourselves by 

@comments = Comment.new

and then assigning its foreign key. @comments.article_id = @article.id

In our Comments model, we didn't want to have the article_id as an attr_accessible because that could be a bit unsafe. But by making a new item and then assigning its article_id later on, you can bypass mass assignment errors.

[binnieinsf]

Hey, it's really great to see your progress! It seems you're moving at a very fast pace :) Keep up the good work

RE: your last post on call back/ the refactoring the method for sending mails. It's probably getting called less that way too. since you're only running that method if the conditions pass. looks good! but then again I just got into after_create   so I'm still unfamiliar with a lot of stuff. 

[binnieinsf]

w4d4: Rails Music App

Hello Spotify! (not really)

Today, we made a rails app that has all the database information about artists, bands, genres, songs, recordings, and albums. We paid special attention to associations. Artists has and belongs to bands. Band has many and belongs to artists. So Destiny's Child could work as a four person band, change their members, get new members, Beyonce could come out of Destiny's Child and be her own "band". Songs was the physical notes on a page that was written by a single artist. Recording of a song is done by a band, whether one person or a real band-like band. I was very proud of the associations that came so smoothly and connected everything exactly the way we wanted it to.

It's so exciting to finally make web applications. To see that I can essentially build a basic posting and structure is really neat. I could make post secret, tumblr, imgur, and bored @ baker (you don't have to know that). It's also organized so neatly, view files, controllers, models, and scripts. Things are much easier than when we used to go over basic CS algorithms. 

Few things to review: form_tags vs. form_for, get more familiar with rake routes.

I have a weekend project idea. I want to make a small web app and put it up on my server! 

[binnieinsf]

After our assessment on Active Record in the morning, we delved deeper into Rails apps. Good news is Active Record seems so intuitive after a week of practice. I feel much stronger about associations and queries. I am still not making as efficient as query as I would like to make (although I am still avoiding N+1 queries with includes, yay)  I would like to be more masterful at long database queries without unnecessary traffic. 

We were using more magical web framework stuff about Rails all day via a JumpStartLabs' Rails Blogger project. We essentially made a tumblr. Tagging capabilities and and commenting capabilities completed. 

A few Rails lessons from the day

1. Tagging an article with a new tag we need many to many relationships between article and tags. We made a taggings that belonged to tags and articles. So tags had many articles through taggings and articles had many tags through taggings. 

2. To update an article with a new tag, instead of adding a new tag, we had to delete all taggings before adding a new tag to make sure the array of tags are flattened.

3. Shovel (<< ) in Rails is the coolest thing since sliced bread! 

In Ruby, << just adds stuff onto an array. But in Rails, through many-to-many relationship (has many and belongs to) shovel can make an object and also create the associations!

ie. article.tags << Tag.create 

This not only makes a new tag and attaches it to Article's tags attr_accessor, but also makes a tagging object that connects the two! Now you have a tag object and a tagging object in one line. Dangerously effective but so very cool. 

4. Partial erbs in view folder are accessible by multiple erb files! If the update page and the create page has many overlapping component, we can avoid breaking the Ruby's golden rule of "Don't Repeat Yourself (DRY)" by making a partial and calling it multiple times in other places. It's kinda like blocks. So convenient. 

  All in all, every little directory of rails are still confusing and convoluted for me, but I feel very empowered by the fact that with a help of references, I could essentially build a few web applications.  

[binnieinsf]

w4d2: MySQL and baseball data

Today was a bit more painful. We ran into much more difficult queries. With a less than friendly database. We used the baseball players, manager, teams, appearances data. (actually left out many many more tables, but you get the point)

First off, neither my partner nor I knew much about baseball. It would have helped, for instance, if we knew that successful players are dictated by Hits/ At Bat.

Secondly, because we wanted more practice with MySQL and really become masterful at primary keys and foreign keys, we used a database that had complicated primary keys. Most tables didn't have primary keys. When it did have the primary key, it was never used in any other instance.  So instead we installed a composite primary key gem and utilized however many identifying keys the table had as its primary keys. This was where most of our troubles stemmed from, since we used about 3 or so primary keys for 10 different tables and got confused easily.

I now have insane amounts of reviewing to do both sinking in what we did in the past few days and reviewing for tomorrow's assessments. So I won't be able to make it to the Women Who Code meet up I've been looking forward to for a while. :(( but on the plus side, getting much more comfortable with MySQL, I can write most not so complicated queries at one go!

[binnieinsf]

w4d1: Active Record... sprinkled with MySQL!

Using a fun new database example of mixed up movie records, we practiced more with Active Record. With a special attention on joins and associations, and more complicated queries.

I think I still prefer SQL queries. Rails makes the work easy but it's hard to figure out how much Rails knows. We tested out that it even knows the plural of deer is deer! or that person is people! How brilliantly smart.

Few technical lesson of the day. (more of a note, really because it's nothing you don't know of.)

1. has_many, :through needs a belong_to on the other end. It's a two way street. If you're going to associate tables, you should build roads both ways.

2. You can build associations that are longer than two hops by making a => 

ie. .joins(:database1 => {:database2 => :database3})

3. You can rename your things with the following

has_many :name_desired, :class_name => 'original_table', :primary_key => :original_primary_key

This gets useful when you have a user who can act as a manager or a player. So you can rename them this way to make it clearer.

[binnieinsf]

w3d5: do what you're best at

I can't believe I am already a third way into the program. It's been a tumultuous ride to say the least. (You can follow all my emotional roller coaster rides in my past posts.)

At some points, I was really discouraged. I thought I didn't have what it takes to be a good developer. I didn't know if I would have much marketable strengths after the program. I wasn't sure if big employers would be interested in me just after 9 weeks of training. 

We had a guest speaker today, Michael Hartl. It was the best reassurance, the perfect mid-marathon bottle of water I needed. He talked about his experience of making Rails Tutorial, something that's not only helped all of us but also something that's been profitable for him and inspired him with a new startup idea. Two takeaway points he had was that knowing the market and being lucky are one of the most important factors that will dictate the future of a startup. It is all about timing and finding the right market. I'd be better off being a B engineer with an A market (or with an A+ business sense.) And most importantly, he reminded us that you should do things that you are the best at. That no one could beat you at. He knew if he made a rails tutorial, he would be better at training beginning programmers than anyone else.

I think it gives me hope that I can find something I can be the best at myself too. I can think of a few things I can beat everyone else in. I feel like I can make use of myself. Not to mention it's still a long way till the program is over and I'm only getting better every day. 

[binnieinsf]

w3d4: Finally Rails

We officially entered the realms of Rails today. Instead of trying to store things into databases ourselves, we got a little help from our friend Rails. During the morning FAQ I was baffled and lost. I had no idea how I could build a URL shortener (basically bit.ly) on our own. My partner and I thought "oh so we'll get like a bitly API?" But everything, from building the database to structuring the tables were entirely in our hangs (although we didn't actually shorten the URL and store it in places. We just created an arbitrary "new url").   

Rails seems so magical that it's almost frustrating. It makes things very easy for us. Too much that sometimes I get confused as to why it's doing what it does. It's kind of like the computer is getting too smart. For instance we were stuck for a while because we couldn't make models. It turns out Rails wanted to do both, make a Active Records migration and then make models themselves. But it's exciting to see that what we learn will lead to practical applications. And I still really love learning about databases and making tables. It's kind of like jigsaw puzzle pieces fitting together. 

[binnieinsf]

w3d3: more SQL and web scraping

Delving deeper into SQL today, we learned more about joining databases and got more practice with subqueries. Most importantly we learned a simple concept of inner join vs. outer join. Left and right joins. They are so simple and easy but it makes life incredibly better. 

In an attempt to utilize our newly honed SQL skills, we embarked on a project to scrape the Hacker News website and make a client for command lines. However, this seemed more difficult than we originally thought. I'm still very new to the world of web. And every html element got mixed up when I was trying to specify which one I would like to select. Scraping was so challenging that I didn't even get a chance to think about making databases. I wonder if it's just because we're unfamiliar with the nokogiri css selector syntax or because we were iterating inefficiently (not using debugger, manually inspecting element in chrome to see what exactly we want.) Hopefully tomorrow we can parse things correctly so we can jump into storing and querying.