The first Ruby on Rails day - which was quite exciting. During a longer than usual lecture (but with an intense exercise break) CJ explained a bit more about the history of Rails and its different layers. The bottom layer is the database followed by migrations and models, which were the focus points for today. Following layers such as models/controllers/views will be discussed later on in the course. Additionally CJ explained associations in depth and those clarifications came in useful during the assignment.
For the assignment we worked on a url shortener in Rails using ActiveRecords. The assignment was great in walking us through the steps of creating a Rail project, how to use migrations and how to set up your models. Drawing the different tables and their relationships on paper helps for the actual implementation. Instead of writing SQL in our Ruby codes we used the methods available my ActiveRecords. Overall I felt this assignment went pretty smooth and we were able to finish everything + bonus before the end of class. The bonus part included a custom validation which was a bit challenging.
I tried the practice assessment tonight which is part SQL and part associations. I need to work on my speed a bit more (and mind the errors due to typing) but hopefully it shouldn't be too much of a problem.
Am looking forward to building another app tomorrow!