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StartUp Confidential: Diary of a Rookie Dev, week 9

Practicing free throws at thoughtbot

Everyday I remind my son that the reason someone is good at something is usually because they've practiced. The reason he swims like a fish and I sink like a rock, is because of weekly practices. The reason he can play the piano, wrestle, and draw airplanes is because he devotes time and effort doing those things. Some people are just naturally gifted at things but most of us have to work at it.

Coding is no different. So, last weekend, I attended thoughtbot's Intro to Rails workshop. Did I need a Rails Intro class? It depends. Every ounce of Rails knowledge I can glean from great sources, I want to do it.

It's no different than a basketball player practicing free throws. They've probably taken tens of thousands of free throws in their careers, yet even elite NBA players practice their free throws. Yeah, I'm "talking' bout practice!"

Some of the key takeaways from thoughtbot were:

Used Rails 4 for the first time....Strong params

Keep your controllers skinny, your models fat, and your views dumb.

No actions in your controller besides the CRUD actions, public anyway.

Don't talk to the model from the view!

Keep your methods to a maximum of 5 lines.

But my biggest "get" was refactoring through method extraction. The principle is simple. If you duplicate code twice---question it, if you repeat it thrice, then it's definitely time to pull it out and put it in a method. Nothing earth shattering, but something I don't readily do. So, was it worth it? Yeah, it was worth it, because I learned a different perspective. A refresher that will only make me a better programmer. Yep, I'm "talkin' bout practice!"

#boutthatlife

On the road to Ruby and that Rails Bling, programming lets you build real things. Learning all I can is the song I sing, programming lets you build real things

The Mascot @thoughtbot

The Office

Break Fast

"Goose" aka Matthew Mongeau

StartUp Confidential: Diary of a Rookie Dev, week 8

Be like Mike

The difference between experience and inexperience is sometimes sharp and crystal clear. Case in point, several times this week I became stumped by problems. On several occasions, I could move the solution close, but not really over the finish line. I twist myself into mental knots, trying different approaches and even wondering whether the approach I'm taking is correct in the first place. I had to call for assistance from Obi-Wan to set the right course. With this, I can't help but be a wee bit discouraged by my coding youth and inexperience. But when I do, I think about my all time Nike commercial from back in the day:

"I've missed more then 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot, and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why….I succeed."

If it take 10,000 hours of dedicated practice for mastery of a subject, then by my very rough estimates, I have 88% of my learning ahead of me. A lot of work to do to become Obi-Wan in my own right.

#boutthatlife

StartUp Confidential: Diary of a Rookie Dev, week 7 (I Think)

Two hundred and One

176 days. Exactly 176 days ago I stepped into a GA for the first day of WDI2 with dreams of coming out the other end as a web developer. Before then, my typical day was wasting working 8 hrs a day for a institutional pharmacy, scraping together whatever time was left over in the day to learn web development. Outside looking in. That was my typical week.

Here was my week, this week

A friend got written about during the @techcrunch disrupt hackathon

Wednesday lunch with the CEO

Emphasis on continued learning

Slow progress on more challenging coding aspects, but still some progress

Offered a full-time development job with my startup

Met the cool dudes of NodeLingo at their Javascript office hours

Everyday I pinch myself

#boutthatlife

StartUp Confidential: Diary of a Rookie Dev, week 6

Train (by) Reading

(you would think that with all these books I would be better at programming)

One of my goals is to upgrade my Ruby programming skills and the Well-Grounded Rubyist by David Black is an awesome Ruby book. Unfortunately, like many of the books I possess, it was falling in the partially read category. I'd start reading, but would taper off when things got too dry. It had been opened far too little since being brought in Nov. 2012.

Since commuting to the city, I utilize that time to get in some "extra" studying in. It's surprising how much quality reading can get done on a 50 minute train ride. Round trip, that time amounts to over 1.5 hours of relatively quiet Ruby study a day. Added up over a week's commute, that's seven and a half hours of learning. Over the course of a month…you get the point.

Yet, even though the WG Rubyist is reader-friendly for a technical book, it's a technical book nonetheless. In order for me to understand what I've read, sometimes I have to digest small, deliberate chunks. Thus, when I read…

The class Class is an instance of itself; that is, it’s a Class object. And there’s more. Remember the class Object? Well, Object is a class—but classes are objects. So, Object is an object. And Class is a class. And Object is a class, and Class is an object.

- The Well-Grounded Rubyist

(say What?!?)

…re-reading is necessary for things to sink into my brain. Ultimately, I'm making progress. I've gotten further into the book this time than my previous attempt. At this pace, maybe I can make another pass at and finally complete jQuery in Action.

As for work…

The most interesting thing probably this week is that our CTO is visiting for two days (Fri/Sat). We'll meet (in person) for the first time and code together as well. This week is similar to many of the previous…part episode of "Coding Wars" with a little "Dog Chases Tail" bloopers mixed in for good measure.

Tool of the Week - http://365psd.com

A new psd of *something* each day. But, the real value is to use the site as UI/Design inspiration, plus it can help you sharpen your css skills by replicating some of the ideas for your projects.

StartUp Confidential: Diary of a Rookie Dev, week 5

"Bout that Life!" - The FinTech Hackathon

8:00am

Arrived at Alley NYC. Thought I would get there early to stake out a spot. No such luck. Chilled in the lobby waiting for my team on a comfy couch.

9:00am

The space start filling up, bagels and strawberry cream cheese for breakfast.

Idea still not pinned down.

1. a social media aggregator that matched stock price to volume of tweets

2. crowd funding platform for businesses with a social mission.

10:00am

Company intros, API demos, standing room only...The place is packed

The "Professional"

While the API demos were being presented, I couldnt help but be distracted by the professional. First, he came in to the hackathon with a full fledged suitcase, apparently fully stocked with wires, computers and other gadgets. He spent the next hour setting up(toolbelt on hip!), mini-screw drivers set in hand, and generally making enough commotion to call attention to himself. I thought he was going to build an actual computer on the spot.

The TakeAway: Don't be that guy, or people will write about you.

11:00am

After light quibbling, the idea is settled. The crowd funding platform.

We begin setting up administrivia: create project, github collaboration setup, screenhero setup, etc. This took about an hour, which wasted an hour of coding. But overall, we gelled quickly.

The TakeAway: Have your idea decided, your individual responsibilites loosely mapped out, and the administrivia completed, before you arrive.

12:00pm to 1:00pm

Awesome Lunch: Plate full of grilled chicked, wraps, rice and guacamole for Qdoba

2:00pm to 5:00pm

Hustle

6:00pm

Dinner: Chicken wraps for days, still full from lunch though.

7:00pm to 8:00pm

Darkness falls; literally and figuratively. Devise is on our brain, screwing

up things that ultimately will not be needed. A little self-doubt starts creeping in. Then we get re-energized by progress on the front-end

9:00pm to 11:00pm

Start to refocus our thinking to only work on what will be show. Sign up/in process, see ya.

The TakeAway: Be flexible in your ideas, approach and give up on technical difficulties (aka "just hard code it" as Aiden told us in the prep meetings). Dont build your demo around your app, build your app around your demo. Create a layout of your presentation, build only what you will need to show.

12:00am

Crowd thins out. More than half of the people are gone.

1:00am to 2:00am

Starbucks run, streets still crowded, fresh air...revived.

Only the true warriors remain, and Jamal says it's because we have a grinding, hustling, get it done mentality because we are 'about that life" So, we informally become "Team: Bout that Life!"

3:00am

Uh Oh, in order to use the Dwolla API we needed a real URL. We were only going to work from localhost. Now we need a live site. So, we switch databases from sqLite to postgres so we can throw it up on Heroku. We get most of the basic functionality complete. The Dwolla API is working and we pass a penny back and forth like it was gold.

4:00am to 6am

Now we just cruise, doing styling stuff and generally joking around.

7:00am

Test, Test, Test. It works every time.

8:00am

We play a joke on Christienne (she left at 1:30am) that she would have to redo the styling of the home page because we lost it with github issues. For 5 minutes, we had her going. She also brought each of us mini-tooth brushes to freshen up, but I carried my funky breath like a badge of honor.

9:00am to 11:00am

The VC

Christine managed to get someone to review our presentation and we met with him in a private room. He happened to be relatively influential VC in the start-up community. As soon as we began, he immediately interrupted, giving pointers, rephrasing our words and breathing life into our essentially boring and dry pitch. As we practiced our pitch, we loosened up and laughed, laughed, laughed. It made a world of difference. Although, we didnt have the best technology, I feel we had the most engaging 3 minutes of all the presenters.

The TakeAway: Your pitch is almost everything - Lighten Up Champ! Engage the audience, show what it does quickly and have fun. Be different in your presentation. Dont be to serious. Drink before you go onstage.

12:00pm

We get our presentation order:

FinGraph

Small Credit Exchange

GlobalFX

Social Equity

[openStreet]

Yay, we go fourth. Our other GA team, goes 23rd.

1:00pm

We present!

Highfives all around!

My goal for this hackathon boiled down to three things:

Build something that works. Done!

Present a good pitch. Check!

Have fun. YES!

This hackathon was a great experience.

Ideas going forward for a hackathon prep

like the people you work with, you dont have to be best friends but liking the person helps ease ineviable pesonality friction

hackerleague - list a bunch of upcoming hackthons

participate in a hackathon topic you care about

have ten ideas to start with

have participants bring 2-3 ideas of there own

build teams around ideas

build teams by skill set (team = ux/designer, devs, even maybe a project mgr)

by first meeting - have teams formed with general ideas in place

by second meeting - have presentation views ready and demo it in group

StartUp Confidential: Diary of a Rookie Dev, week 4

git == gtfooh

Ok. I'll admit it - my Git game is laaaaammme! Don't get me wrong, on my personal projects (read:alone), I can git commit, merge, stash like nobodies business. But introduce other people into the mix, and I palms get sweaty with with every push, pull, blah, blah, blah. I just don't trust myself git. When working with multiple people, things can get really confusing, really fast.

The way we use git (and try to minimize errors) while working is mostly having one person (out of two) responsible for the commits, creating branches, etc. Using Jira (project management) we create tickets for features and use those tickets numbers to "hook" into Git/GitHub. Even using this approach, sometimes issues will arise. Learning more about git workflow best practices adds another item to my ever-expanding checklist.

Which is why this week's FinTech Hackathon may != a barrel of laughts. My adventures with Git notwithstanding, I'm excited about the experience. Our GA sponsored teams are formed. We've had two prep meetings. Of our four team members, all are new devs and only one has participated in a hackathon before.

My hope for the 24hrs is to build a functional, decent looking app and present a good pitch. We have good two ideas on the board but, most importantly, we just want to have fun.

So, depending on how we do reaching those goals, next week's post will either be: Anatomy of a hackathon or Autopsy of a hackathon.

Tool of the week: DevTools Autosave

Making live css / javascript changes in Inspector and then copying it and pasting it in your source file can be a workflow pain-in-the-arse. This extension allows you to live edit and update your source automatically by clicking refresh.

Credit: Saw in a NetTuts tutorial

StartUp Confidential: Diary of a Rookie Dev, week 3

Sometimes you eat the bear; other times, the bear eats you.

The first part of Monday mornings usually involves finding where we left off and where to start. We possess a wide range of freedom of what we can work on. When establishing our initial workflow with the CTO, we decided we would rather work on larger chunks of the site figuring it out as we go, rather than him issuing small tickets that we complete.

We work from an MVP outline, which list the basic functionality of the app. The advantages are obvious: we control our time, what we work on and it feels entrepreneurial. Yet, there are disadvantages. Being on a small distributed team can create bottlenecks and challenges. Deciding what to work on sometimes depends on other team members. At times, we can only go so far until we hit a wall that involves another members responsibilities. In that case, we go as far as we can, then we move on.

Trying to understand someone else's code can also be difficult, especially if it is the first time you're seeing the code being deployed in a way you're not familiar with. Get stuck and there's no easy, lean-your-chair-back-and-ask-a-question method of unsticking yourself. And while, using gems like Devise offer huge advantages in setting up your auth process, as oppose to rolling your own; if you are not familiar with it (me), then lord have mercy on your soul when you need to customize it. Time to get cozy with the documentation.

Yet, after all is said and done, the advantages of this workflow outweights the disadvantages.

Tool of the Week: apigee.com/providers

Explore different apis in a console

Credit: Aiden Feldman

StartUp Confidential: Diary of a Rookie Dev, week 2

We are still getting use to the dynamics of working remotely. On our first "face to face" meeting with the dev team (through Google Hangouts), we established a little more formally the communications between us and the other developers. We have an open chat line for more immediate questions for the CTO, email and the weekly scheduled Google hangouts (although we will have had 4 by this weeks end.)

Had lunch with the CEO & CTO on Tuesday, which was excellent. Their passion for the product is contagious and, the fact that we are really core members of the team gives us a huge advantage and huge responsibility. She even suggested we may get a chance to fly out Michigan to meet the rest of the team.

The week coding-wise started a little slow. As I'm learning, sometimes you just can't move as quickly as you like. Development can be a slow process and your day can melt away because of technical and debugging issues. However, in the latter part of the week, we started gaining momentum and got that small sense of achievement that comes when you achieve those incremental goal. The CTO is suprised (happily) that we have been able to hit the ground running walking. He figured it might have taken 3 weeks before we actually did something.

For me, now is the time to continue to kick my dev skills up a notch. I'm looking to step my problem deconstruction and Ruby game up (through Project Euler), enhance my front-end skills (GA Front-End study group), and continue to upgrade my personal projects (Code-Crew/Hacker Hours).

Tool of the Week: ChromeDev Tools (video by CodeSchool)

Just started watching this course and although I'm still at the very beginning, I've already learned several new awesome tips from the first video alone.

StartUp Confidential: Diary of a Rookie Dev

Week 1: Closing Chapters

My first week working for The Start-Up marks the end of me using the term "aspiring" in front of "developer", as I describe myself. Truly, although I called myself a web developer (as per my business cards), I sorta felt like a fraud. Without real experience, I had a hard time calling myself a developer and feeling honest about it. That chapter in my life has closed. I am a web developer. The term is slowly and comfortably settling into my mindset. I like it.

Indeed, the closing of one chapter in your life can mark the beginning of another.

On Sept. 14, 2012, I resigned from my job after getting accepted to the Web Development Immersive program @GA. The file containing the resignation letter is called "I quit my job to start my life". Thus, one chapter closes, another one opens.

On December 15, 2012 the WDI program ends, and on March 11, 2013, I begin a Jr dev apprenticeship at a start-up. Again, one chapter closes, and another one opens. No longer only building my personal apps, I'm getting real-world, ground floor, start-up experience. This is for real. Awesome and a little scary at the same time.

The first few days included getting to know the purpose of the site, the team and basic administrative stuff done. Getting access to the repo (private), getting a feel for the workflow as a distributed team (and working with a new dev partner), meetings & greetings with the team (good people, all), signing confidentiality agreements (yikes! awesome). Hurry up and wait, plus a few fits and starts, as we get ramped up were part of the process. Yet, at the first weeks end, if someone asks me what I do, I say "I'm a web developer at a start-up in NYC". Yep, that fraud feeling is gone.

Tool of the week: Screenhero

Introduced to me by Alex, Screenhero is a very cool collaboration tool we use to pair program.

In memoriam

We will always love you....

Mary Lannaman (8/12/1926 to 3/10/2013)

Code Angry

Two months after finishing General Assembly's Web Development, I accepted a position with a start-up through GA's Apprentice Program. Starting with the end in mind, I hope to solidify the knowledge that I learned in the WDI2 class. Since I left the class, I've been coding on some level, everyday, mostly on two personal ideas. I've used this time to code angry. I code angry everyday. Angry, in the sense that I while I believe my Javascript/jQuery/ Ruby/Rails skills have improved, I don't believe I will ever be satisfied. I will never be the best developer. That's not the point. My goal is to be the best developer I can be. So, with the end in mind, I will to increase my raw Javascript( and jQuery) and have a "intimate" relationship with Rails.

How I got here

"Congratulations!" the email's subject line said and, from that moment on, I felt things would be different. For a little over a year, I've watched in-person programming courses come alive and teach novices, like myself, how to code. My first recollection of this type of program was with Code Academy in Chicago. I followed them closely, and in February 2012, I decided I would apply for admission for September of 2013. I loved the idea of in-class, immersive learning. Web development from the ground up, surrounded by like-minded students was an opportunity I decided not to let past. My wife, although forever supportive, didn't share my enthusiasm for a three month tour of Chi-town. Listen, I hesitated as well. Code Academy is totally (rightfully so) plugged into the Chicago tech / entrepreneurial scene. Since I had no intention of trading NY for Chi-Town, I would still have to come home and engage the New York tech scene. Meanwhile, Dev Bootcamp in San Francisco launched. This program was full-time, more intensive and added a "hiring" element to the mix. But, San Francisco was basically out of the question. So as I initially saved money for Code Academy, I found myself looking for a New York-based solution. Then, I stumbled upon SkillShare and General Assembly. Skillshare offered classes and courses on the topics that I wanted to learn. However, since they are run by individuals on an ad hoc basis, I would have to pick classes and wait for them to be offered. I wanted something a bit more intense, sequential and structured. General Assembly's Intro to Web Development was more up my alley so I applied. This is a 16 week, 96 class hour course designed to teach development with the novice in mind. Thankfully, I was accepted. It's a solid start; a way for me to structure my learning process, plus meet and collaborate with other aspiring web developers. However, I know 96 hours won't be enough to position myself as a Jr. web developer. My goal is to add approximately 30 - 36 additional hours of self-directed study to accelerate my learning curve. As I started to solidify my plan, another great thing happened. I discovered that General Assembly was planning to offer a full-time web development program, similar to Dev Bootcamp. I JUMPED at the opportunity. After applying and a Skype interview.... I'm ecstatic to say that on September 9th, I learned I will be joining the inaugural Web Development Immersive program on October 15th... "Congratulations!" the acceptance email's subject line said. From this moment on, I know things would be different.

"If a blog is written on the internet and no one reads it, does it make a difference?"

Hello World.

My name is Derrick Lannaman and I am an aspiring web developer documenting my journey into the vast wilderness of teaching oneself to program. I suppose the purpose of this blog could be to help others gain insight into one mans' path of learning to code. But, I have no illusions that I will have any readers. And, that is OK. My purpose is to chronicle my experiences, growth and state of mind as I embark on my transition from passionate n00b to (hopefully) gainfully employed entry-level Rails developer. It will allow me, a normally private person, to express and time-stamp my successes and stumbles, wins and losses, with brutal honesty and candor so when I look back I can reflect upon just how far I have come.

#learning rails #n00b #entry-level

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