Smörgåsblog

Learning to code in Ruby on Rails. Living in Chicago

[willpiers]

Testing is fun

I've been starting to write tests lately. I know it sounds nerdy and you should feel free to laugh at me, but it is freakin' fun! I can't believe how much better it makes you feel about your code when you can run "rspec spec/" and see those little green dots pile up and tell you that your code isn't broken. And when you can change the implementation of some piece of code and your tests still pass, it feels like Obviously I'm still a novice when it comes to testing, and my test covergae is probably not the best, but I feel a lot better about my code, knowing that it does exactly what I specified that it should do in my tests. Okay, that's enough nerding out for now. If you don't test your code, you should try it. It just might make your development process more enjoyable.

[willpiers]

Reflection

Finishing up at The Starter League is a bittersweet event. It's been very rewarding and enriching to learn new skills, a new way of thinking about things, and augmenting my problem solving toolbox. At the same time, I can't wait to be in Boulder for the summer with my family and friends I've been thinking a lot recently about whether I got sufficient value out of TSL to justify the cost. Here are some of my musings We try to get more twitter followers, to make more money, and to increase our value; we do these things because we want to be thought of as successful by our parents, teachers, employers, and friends. I think I've come upon a nugget of clarity with respect to this process. As much as going to college, getting good grades, coming to starter league, and the prospect of landing an awesome internship for the summer makes my friends and family proud and excited, I've done these things and strive to do similar things for a much different reason. I really feel that coming to Starter League has enriched my life. Not because it will probably increase my chances of getting a good job, and not because it will make my family or friends proud. The selfish truth is that I study mathematics and have come to The Starter League because I want to push myself and grow as a person; I want to enjoy my time and I want to learn. Learning, to me, and at this point in my life, is the most enjoyable experience I know. I think many people spend too much time thinking about how many twitter followers they have, how much money they want to make, and how attractive of a partner they can find. These are all fine activities to engage in, but I really wish everyone could do more of the things they love to do. Don't work to satisfy the expectations of your peers, work to grow as a person and increase the value which you perceive yourself to have. By this I mean work to impress yourself. Yeah, that was my nugget of clarity. With this in mind, I feel pretty good about my experience at TSL. Here are some cool outcomes that I feel had positive effects on me:

Met lots of awesome people; the students and staff at TSL are awesome people

Got to see a cool (in two senses) city.

Saw many of the best tech startups in Chicago: Trunk Club, 37 Signals, Groupon, Threadless, TSL

Made the jump from zero to one, as Jeff puts it. I learned to code!

To reiterate the last point, I feel a lot more confident in my skills and my ability to consume other resources

Got to build a real, sweet app! check it out at startnagging.com

Finally, as much as I, and the TSL people, would like to tell you about my incredible delta, (the change from start to finish in coding skill etc.) I cannot. This isn't to say TSL wasn't valuable or that I wouldn't recommend it. Much to the contrary, I had a decent amount of knowledge and ability coming into Starter League, I just needed Raghu and company to be there to answer questions, and guide me over the hump that comes at the start of learning to code; I needed TSL to help me get my second foot through the door. Thanks TSL

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Did you do all the html and programming for the aesthetics of your blog?

I wish! this is a theme called effector I believe, from some designers called pixel union. I do write the html for my posts though, because tumblr doesn't support a lot of things that they should.. like making lists, underlining text, or images which are hosted elsewhere on te interwebs. haha

[willpiers]

Ermahgerd

Okay since my last post I have done the following:

Watched the Hoosiers handily beat the Wolverines

Wathced Ray Lewis's last NFL game.

Visited The Trunk Club

Saw the coolest clock ever at 37signals

Visited Threadless

Learned a Ton of Rails

Clearly, there's too much stuff to talk about. so... here are some things:

37signals freakin' blew me away. what an awesome place to work. I love their ideology about passive communication and having long blocks of uninterrupted work time.

I miss my dog, Baxter, and my family/friends in Colorado

The weather here is pretty miserable right now.

Rails is so much fun to learn. We've been learning how to associate two different models. This is super interesting and important because it enables applications to combine information in new ways, which is, when you really think about it, how most apps provide value to customers.

I read two blog posts from my friend Michael Crismali (from my TSL class) today, and somehow I stole this unordered list format from him subconsciously and I'm noticing that now... weird.

The doughnut vault is the best place ever. dreams come true there.. seriously.

Seriously doughnut vault On another note: I started working on this idea that Ankur and I had the other day. We were hanging out one evening and we started complaining about the emails we were getting form other TSL students about possible demo day projects; there were lots of them, they were disorganized and there was no way of filtering out the best ideas quickly, and people wrote proposals that were far too long to hold my attention. We decided it might be fun to make an application to be used by future TSL students to post brief idea proposals and get constructive feedback. ideas would have a twitter-like character limit and we would implement a reddit style upvote/downvote system for user-based curation of ideas. I've worked on the idea a bit now and it's been fun applying concepts from class to it. I dont't think we'll use the idea for demo day but I plan to continue working on it. Anywhoozle.. that's enough rambling and incoherence for now, expect more in the next post.

[willpiers]

Colder than Boulder

Hello interwebs. I am literally amazed at how quickly a week passes here. It's astonishing how fast a week can elapse without me having time to write here. Of course, you never have time for anything; you make time for the things you like to do. Deep shit, I know This past week brought a lot of cool discussions among classmates and instructors, and we have now (nearly) completed our first CRUD app. I'm really starting to feel like I can go off on my own and read the rails guides or the ruby/rails documentations. It's a great feeling, but I'm really excited to be able to build things. Right now I feel like the main things holding us from being able to make incredibly powerful apps are, 1) validating the information that we take in; i.e. making all of the information in our databases uniform, and 2) making associations between different resources in our applications (for facebook, this means linking a user to their posts, or a post to its comments and likes). We're so close and I really think that we'll be building great things soon. I have plans to make a blog from the ground up soon. I had some great times with the TSL guys (not many gals though, unfortunately) this week as well. Friday evening we went to a bar and then over to the "full stack house" for some hookah and a few drinks. The full stack house is where Arvin, Raghu, and a few other Starter League alumni /students/instructors live; it's a really nice place and the guys are very inviting and cool. Today, about 15 of us TSL students made our way over to chase auditorium for an event put on by Technori called the Pitch, or something similar. I had heard some great things, but I really was a little underwhelmed. There were some decent ideas, and one or two relatively charismatic presenters, but that's it. Three of the five presenters were really poor speakers and didn't have clarity in their pitches. Anyway, it was a good time and it was really cool to see Harper Reed, the CTO for Obama's recent campaign; he was an awesome speaker and had some good things to say. We've been doing a lot of brainstorming recently for demo day projects, and I think we're getting pretty close to actually starting on one. My buddies (Ty and Ankur) and I are pretty excited about it and I think if we find some designers interested in joining us we'll be on our way. In completely unrelated news, I think I'll be going to the Michigan vs. Indiana basketball game this saturday. That's #1 and #3 nationally... And the Super Bowl is on sunday. Happy surfing, you interwebbers.

[willpiers]

Blistering

This past week of class has been crazy. I knew the pace was going to pick up, but we're covering so much ground each class now that I'm not sure how it can last for another 9! Just in the past week, we've learned how to pull information from the Facebook API, do a lot of powerful things with Ruby, and made our first Rails Applications. In case you didn't catch all that, I'll go into a little bit of detail on what each of those things means.

First of all, "pulling info from the Facebook API" (Application Programming Interface) means, basically, that we can go out on the internet and use a tool provided by Facebook to access our own content (Or other peoples's, with permission). Facebook wraps up everything nicely in a syntax called JSON so that we developers can grab that and convert it into Ruby. At this point, we've learned enough about Ruby to play with the data and see how powerful this technique will be for us in the future. The first Rails App that everyone has made now is a simple one to help Raghu learn names. Basically, the app goes out and fetches some data from an API created by TSL and uses everyone's name, twitter handle, and some other info to put together a sort of flash card for Raghu. It's very simple; it can't take input from users or let you have any interesting interaction with it, but it's just been awesome to be able to tell Ruby to write HTML pages for us. Making that process work for the first time, or having an aha! moment with Ruby feels like this:

As fast as we've moved through the code, it seems like the experience is moving even faster. I've been here for two weeks, and I've only got nine left! 1871 and TSL really have a great culture; everyone seems enthusiastic about their work and there's a lot of positive energy (ping pong tables and free beer on Fridays doesn't hurt). Happy trails!

[willpiers]

First Impressions

So... It's been an awesome couple of days. I intended to write this post a few days ago but I've been hanging out with new Starter League friends all three nights so far! Class has been awesome I've heard so many great things about Jeff Cohen, who has been the lead instructor for most of the w\Webdev courses offered in previous quarters. I hadn't heard as much about the teaching style of Raghu, my instructor. I'm relieved to have spent about 6 hours in class with him now; he's a great teacher (though we haven't gotten to anything too technical yet). On the first day of class, we went over some basic command line statements, as well as some simple HTML and CSS. On day 2 we finished up our discussions on CSS and moved onto Ruby. Because I've already learned all of the content we've covered up until now, the classes were a little slow for me. Of course, I'm confident that the pace will feel blistering in a few weeks. Raghu did explain that we will be spending 9 of our 11 weeks on rails, and that we won't be talking about HTML and CSS in any significant detail for the rest of the quarter. I'm super excited to go to class and I'm really happy to a part of such a great group The people: even more awesome On Monday evening I stayed at 1871 (the space in the Chicago Merchandise Mart where TSL runs) and watched the BCS national title game, in which Alabama STOMPED Notre Dame. It was a good time, and Arvin told me yesterday that we might be able to use the space for a movie night or something in the coming weeks. Sweet. Tuesday evening I spent some time with TY and Muhammad, two guys in the PM Web Development class with me. We went to a decent pub near the merchandise mart. I'm really wishing I were 21 at this point; I'm tantalizingly close and it just seems archaic that I shouldn't be able to drink.. I digress. Last night I went to a hookah bar called Ambrosia in Lincoln Park and then went back for some more hookah and discussion at Arvin's place. There were a lot of Starter League alumni over at Arvin's house, so I enjoyed talking with those guys. Anywhoozle, TSL is off to an awesome start. I'm really excited to keep it going and keep learning web development. I had my first baby aha! moment yesterday in class; it pertained to method definitions in ruby and some variable assignment that goes on behind the scenes. Cool beans, eh?

[willpiers]

Beware of Jargon

As previously mentioned, I'd like to outline some of my proficiencies and deficiencies, as I see them. Feel free to skip this post if you don't care about web development in the slightest. HyperText Markup Language (HTML) - this is a very simple language used to create webpages. i.e. you tell your web browser which things are paragraphs, titles, which things should be bold, et cetera. I would say I'm fairly proficient in HTML but have very little experience working with the newest additions in the HTML5 specification. Cascading StyleSheets (CSS) - another relatively simple language used to describe presentational aspects of a webpage, like colors, fonts, border, and the like. I'm equally proficient in CSS as I am with HTML but again, I'm not familiar with a lot of the newest specifications, CSS3 JavaScript (JS) - this is the first object-oriented language. traditionally, this language is used to provide behavioral information to a web browser. i.e. transitions (as you would know them in powerpoints or film editing) and similar interactions between a webpage and it's user. I am woefully lacking when it comes to JavaScript; I have taken some tutorials and things but have never done enough work actually manipulating objects in the DOM (Document-Object Model) with straight, vanilla JS. jQuery - this is what is known as a "JavaScript Library". What this means is that jQuery is a bunch of code that you can download for use in your own projects, which makes it easier/prettier/simpler to write your JavaScript. I have used some jQuery in a couple of projects, but I'm not confident in my abilities with it. Of course, I'm not entirely sure whether I should be focusing my efforts on learning vanilla JS or jQuery. Ruby - Ruby is another object-oriented language. Honestly, I can't say that I know that much about Ruby other than that it is important because it was used to create Ruby on Rails (RoR), the popular web app framework that I came to Chicago to learn. I know a bit of ruby but I've never built anything particularly interesting with it. SQL (Structured Query Language) - this is a language that helps developers store, retrieve, and manipulate data in a database. This is important because many applications store huge amounts of data in very large databases, and combining your users' information in creative ways is really the whole point of most popular applications. Anywhoozle, I don't have any experience with MySQL, I've just read enough to know approximately what it is and what it's used for. PHP (HyperText Processor) - PHP is a language used to create web applications, sort of like ruby on rails. PHP works by embedding little bits of code throughout an HTML page; it is used in conjunction with a relational database to retrieve, store, and manipulate data. I don't know much about PHP, just enough to know that I'd rather learn the Rails way. i.e. the rails culture and philosophy tickles my fancy. Rails - Ruby on Rails is a web application framework. This means that Rails is a bunch of Ruby code that developers download and use to help them create powerful applications quickly and with consistency. i.e. anyone that opens up another person's Rails app can always find certain things in the same place they would be in any other Rails app. For instance, the stylesheets are always in the same spot: in the assets/stylesheets folder. This is, in some respects, the "largest" or "most important" item of any on this list. I say this because it really takes a basic knowledge of most everything else on this list to really make a nice Rails application (as far as I know, anyway). I actually do know quite a few things about rails applications; enough to know that it's a really cool system and that I'm excited to build applications with it. whew! that's enough of that. There are way more languages I could talk about, and I could, but I won't. First day of class is tomorrow. Expect another update soon.

[willpiers]

Enter TSL

This is weird.. I've never written much before; there's an unbelievable number of things I could write about today, so much on the horizon, but I don't really know which things to write about and how it should be organized.

I'm feeling very anxious and excited. Class starts tomorrow and it's a weird thing; I've been excited about this opportunity for months and it's finally here. There's no turning back now, no room for indecision; it's surreal.

I'm all in on this adventure. Class is only 10 hours per week, but I intend to be in the building closer to about 50 hours per week. As well, there are quite a lot of conferences and meetups going on around here, by and for coders.

One other thing I'd like to capture here, for those applying to The Starter League in the future, and for anyone interested in seeing how different my knowledge will be before and after the experience, is what I currently know about web development.

I really don't know how much I know, as it turns out. There's this thing called the Dunning-Kruger effect where people that don't know a subject very well tend to feel that they are far more experienced in the subject than they actually are, and experienced individuals in a particular field tend to underrate their ability. It's hard to escape this effect, even though I am fully aware of it.

Right then, I'll start writing that. feel free not read it, as it may get a little bit dry, technical, or (probably and) boring.

[willpiers]

[willpiers]

Introductions

Hello interwebs!

In case you aren't familiar with that term... it means internet. My name is Will, and this is a blog that I'm starting. Okay, enough obvious stuff. I'm starting this blog for a few reasons, and hopefully you'll like to know what they are, because I'm sharing them.

1) I just moved to Chicago: I'm starting a web development class in a few days at an institution called "The Starter League". This is pretty exciting for me and I feel that I should document it for myself, and that it might interest you.

2) I have never created anything! A big part of the reason I came out to Chicago for this class was that I've been milking off my parents and going to school for far too long. I feel that I've never contributed any content to... anything really; I want to make a transformation over the next few months from consumer to producer. More on that later.

3) I suck at writing. Maybe it isn't apparent, but I have primarily studied mathematics for the past 3 years. I've never been particularly interested in, or good at, writing but I feel that this is a good way to start.

Anywhoozle... I think that's enough for a first post. I don't know when I'll write again, but I expect to be writing here when I learn something that I deem worthy of sharing, or.. just whenever I feel like writing.

P.S. expect a few pictures from the first few days of my excursion