And Now Back to Our Regularly Scheduled Programming...

So about that long post that I was going to publish...yeah, that's not going to happen. :)

I had a little adventure going that didn't quite work out, but now I'm back to focusing on Ruby, Ruby on Rails, and the STE(A)M Truck app, which I plan to deploy for the initial test run at the end of the month. To that end, I have restarted my reading of  Pragmatic Agile Web Development with Rails 4, from the beginning and I'm on Chapter 4. I have also restarted reading Beginning Ruby From Novice to Professional, from Chapter 6. Because I've been learning so many different languages, I just want to make sure I have everything straight, before I start the actual coding on the STE(A)M Truck app, so I'm doing little small apps, exercises, and programs to test out my ideas. I'm pretty sure that I have it under control, the only thing that's really giving me a little trouble is allowing the users to add images to the projects and how to display them, but that's something that I'm going to work on after I get everything else in order. It would be cool if I had someone around my level to work with; It would be better if I knew someone who was already good at Ruby and Ruby on Rails that could answer my approximately 13 billion questions. Sometime I go on IRC to ask questions, but it's a little bit frustrating trying to get answers on there. Always helpful...but still, a little bit frustrating. Sometimes I think that people may not like that I only come on when I have a question, so that's a thing, too.

I started catching up in my Algorithms class, this weekend. I had only watched the intro lecture before yesterday, but I'm over half way through week one. I think that I'm learning a lot and some problem solving things are starting to clear up, but there are some math concepts that I really need to brush up on. I've also realized that I don't know enough Java to actually do the programming assignments for this class, but I'm going to still work through the class for the exposure to the material on algorithms and Java. It's not that I don't understand what's going on, I would just have to stop the video and figure it out, and I would rather start learning Java by reading books and doing tutorials, and take what I can from the class. I learned about Koans about a week ago, so I'm going to try those, as well. At this point I can take my time learning Java and just do the class for fun. I'm actually learning a lot about algorithms. I signed up for another Algorithms class at Stanford that starts in October, though. So I should definitely be ready for that. I just looked at my Coursera schedule, I have two more classes that start in 8 days. It's probably best that I'm not going to try to do the programming assignments and learn Java, too. I have a few Java books that I'm going to read. I'll probably start reading the first one on tomorrow; I want to spend today getting set up to get the app that I'm working on done in time.

OT: I don't know how I feel about the iPhone 6. I think that I have a free upgrade, but I'm just not excited about getting a new phone. For one thing, I don't know if I want the 6 or the 6 plus and I know, for sure, that I don't want anything that takes my fingerprints [pic related]. I don't really understand how people can still be so trusting of this kind of thing in the wake of the Edward Snowden leaks. Regardless of how you feel about what he did, we now know the types of things that our governments are doing with technology and surveillance and how companies are cooperating, forced or otherwise, with these efforts. While it may be unavoidable, I'm still not super comfortable with supplying bio-metric information to a large corporation that supplies governments and other companies with my personal information, know what I'm sayin'.

Another issue, is that Apple has been disappointing me since Steve Jobs left. It seems like I've been having all sorts of problems with my upgrades and iTunes. Last night, I upgraded to iOS 8. In order to do that, I had to erase all of my music...since the update required over 4 gigs of memory. I was okay with that. The problem was when I went to load my music back onto my phone, iTunes, on my computer, just assumed that I no longer wanted to enjoy that 4 gigs of music and deleted the whole playlist. So I would just like to thank the good people at Apple for allowing me to spend my Sunday morning rebuilding my playlist for the gym today: 'preciate that.

I don't know anything about Android phones, but I do know the frustration of trying do things on my friend's phones. I think that I'm probably not going to worry about trying to change phones, right now. I'm relatively happy with what I have since I got my music back on this one, for now.

In other news, this was pretty funny...so now I'm also reading The Soul of Man Under Socialism, by Oscar Wilde. I like this guy.

Learning Java...

I now know what they meant when they were saying that Ruby and Python are languages that are designed for the programmer vs. the computer, and how they make programming fun. Initially, I thought "how can programming not be fun?" However, after studying Objective-C and Java, I'm pretty clear on what they were talking about.

Java, from my understanding, so far, is a "lean" language, so you have to import "modules" that are already packed into Python and Ruby. In Java, you  have to write "import java.util.Scanner" to allow the user to input information, whereas you can just create a variable to accept the input in Ruby and Python. There are other little things like declaring types for variables and only being able to use one type of object in arrays, that make programming in Java...different.

The cool thing about declaring a type of variable, though, is that you decide what kind of variable you want to use ahead of time and you don't actually have to write your number in a decimal form, if they don't have numbers following the decimal. This is good for programming because you are thinking through the type of result that you want, which avoids using integers, when you want a float and having to go back and put in the decimals if you forget.

Another built in feature in Ruby and Python is the error messages. Although, you can resolve that situation by using an IDE, it comes built in to the other languages and coding in Java requires you to *sigh* download a IDE like NetBeans, free of charge and install it on your computer, when you're first getting set up.

Things that you can do using Java that you can't use Ruby and Python for? Compiling programs into .exe and other files that you can run as stand alone software (I think you may be able to do this on python, with some extra effort...Cython?) and building native mobile apps for android, which is huge. I think that with the popularity of mobile devices, not being able to use a language to build native applications for them is a pretty big disadvantage...if you like making stuff for other people to use. Even though there are plenty of things you can still build for people who are sitting in front of computers or for things that use Raspberry Pis or Arduinos. For me, the most exciting thing right now, as far as development is concerned, is making things that can be used no matter where they are on many different kinds of devices. I really hope that something can be done about this...and soon [ yes, I know about Ruby Motion :) ].

Challenges with learning2Java that aren't about the language itself:

1. The writers of the books. I'm not literary expert or anything, but the way that they write/speak is hard to follow. The way they say things is not fun, at all. I don't know if it's just me or what, but I had such a hard time reading the books that I decided to watch youtube videos first so that I could get a general understanding of what's going on. It's not like I don't like to read or I just picked books at random, either. I did an internet search to try to find the best books to learn with, but yeah...
2. Leaving this hanging: public static void main(String []args). Yeah, you really can't do that. It's not cool to tell me that you're going to explain something later, and then wait to talk about it at the end of the book. Sorry. I NEED to know. [ note to self: why haven't you googled this, yet? ]  How about walking me through it and then going into more detail later. I understand that "public" means that it will be available to other code, they explained that "main" means that this is the operating class that the compiler will look for, and from studying Objective-C, I think that "void" means that a function will not return anything, but I have no idea what that means for a class or if this is even the same thing in Java, and "static"? I need all of this explained and I need to be clear that I'm thinking in the right direction on this. That "String []args" part also needs to be explained, especially since I keep seeing those square brackets moved to different places in different code. How am I supposed to concentrate on what you're trying to teach me if this keeps coming up unexplained?

This probably sounds like a lot of complaining, but it's just my growing pains. I'm definitely going to take advantage of all opportunities to learn new things. [ ...especially Java, since it's the dominant mobile platform and I definitely want to develop for it...even though I have an iPhone ;) ]. I'm just getting started with Java and Objective-C, so if I start saying things, in the future, like "I don't see what people's problem with Java is" or "actually, Objective-C is pretty cool, I'm glad I learned it before I started Swift" don't be surprised. :)

I think that I'm going to go study a little Ruby now. 

...because Ruby.