Week 2: The cleanup is done
The weekly summary:
This was a slower week as it included the thanksgiving weekend- that meant travel, shopping, friends, family, parties etc. Following thanksgiving, I redesigned the rest of the website edwave.org . Eventually, we even managed to push it to heroku- this involved a few challenges, as we had to switch from SQLite to PostgreSQL. That said, we still need to work through a number of bugs before we deploy to the main EdWave site.
From a learning standpoint, I quickly ran through though the rails tutorial first 6 chapters, that allowed me to deploy a temporary application. I continued revising the fundamentals of Ruby, got some insight into JS API for google maps. I also continued to work through the GetBootstrap guide.
The positives
EdWave design completed
A partially running RoadtoIndia app uploaded to heroku.
The negatives
Was not able to code everyday
Day 1:
Work, EdWave
Time spent: 2 hours
Learning
Languages/ frameworks: JS API for google maps.
Resource: Maps documentation
Time spent: 30 mins
This day there was not much coding today, and worked less s we wanted half a day for friends/ family (thanks giving holiday)- As far as work was concerned, it was just research. We were looking at legal matters, planning a path for the next few months etc.
In terms of learning- I was looking through some JS API for google maps. I might have to use this in my travel site. Just a semblance of what I intend to build on this site- bloggers and planners can map their routes. It will be integrated with some animations, links to text areas and reviews/plans of various legs of their trip, be it accommodation or travel. I will tell you more about this idea when I get a picture of the power of mapping APIs that is currently available.
Day 2, Day 3, Day 4:
Work, EdWave
Time spent: 2 hours
I shall skip 3 days ahead as this was the thanksgiving weekend- we went out of town with a few friends who were visiting.
Day 5, 6:
Work, EdWave
Time spent: 10 hours
Learning
Resource:GetBootstrap
Chapters: Base CSS
Time spent: 60mins
We tried to figure out immigration matters. Additionally, I worked on completing the workflow of the site and completing all gaps on the web page. This included fixing buttons, adding tooltips, and making sure the various links work. Finally, upon fixing this, we discovered that the we need to switch from SQLite to PostgreSQL for us to be able to upload to heroku. This would be a fight for another day.
In the meanwhile, I also went through some bootstrap resources to figure out how a lot of css elements work. This should be fundamental to web programming. Bootstrap is an incredible framework that makes design life so much easier.
Day 7:
Work, EdWave
Time spent: 7 hours
Learning
Resource:Ruby on Rails tutorial
Chapters: 1-5
Time spent: 120mins
In a quest to figure out exactly how PostgreSQL works, I started from scratch to build a new app and in the process, went through the first 6 chapters of the rails application tutorial. At the end, I was able to push this up to heroku. This helped me figure out what was wrong with EdWave itself.
I effectively built a sample app (chap 1-6) and pushed it up to heroku. I shall continue to work on this to go through all 11 chapters of the rails tutorial. Once you are strong in this, you can do wonders. Idea to execution could be done in a week! I also managed to deploy a sample application. It is very basic and it captures the fundamentals of RoR.