Pulling it all together...

I'm feeling good about where I am with my coding, I started a new book on Rails this week, called Pragmatic Agile Programming with Rails 4. I'm kind of wishing that I had done this before I repeated the Michael Hartl tutorial. This book is really enjoyable and I'm taking my time getting through it. I just finished chapter 6, today. The demo app that they started with in this book was different from the other tutorials and books that I have read, in that it was much simpler and clear.

I found out over the weekend that I can't dual boot Linux with my Windows 8. After being frustrated with the compatibility issues with Ruby Gems for Windows, I decided to do whatever it took to get Linux working. I spent the better part of Saturday morning and early afternoon working on this to no avail. I gave it a half-hearted attempt when I first got this computer,almost a year ago, but it didn't work out because, at that time, you had to disable the secure boot to get it operating and I didn't bother to do that. Apparently, this no longer an option. I really don't understand why Microsoft is doing this. Are they banking on all developers, that aren't currently using Apple or Linux, exclusively, to just switch over to using their development tools? I'm contemplating trying to switch my OS to Windows 7. At this point the only reason that I'm using Microsoft is because of Photoshop, Rosetta Stone, and the years of work that I have on my external hard drive that I carried over from the computer that had before this one.

A few months back a started taking a Stanford MOOC course on networking. I learned a lot about how networking works, in theory, but I started getting real world experience this week, when I had to change my password, because one of my neighbors has been leeching off my WiFi signal. I had been putting it off, because a.) it wasn't a serious issue, and b.) I didn't feel like resetting the passwords on every device in the house, but they finally forced my hand by hogging up all of the bandwidth, which led to additional googling and experimentation with my router.

I've also decided to start getting my professional stuff, like my LinkedIn and resume updated, so that I can seriously start looking for a job doing programming. I've been writing a real summary for my profile. Last night a friend of mine asked if I would be interested in interviewing for a position at ThoughtWorks, so that also forced the issue a little bit, although, I have been meaning to do this stuff for a while. The problem is that I enjoy programming so much, right now, that I just really want to keep learning it as a skill and I end up not devoting as much time as I should to the "career" side of coding. I'm starting to think that I may end up just doing freelance work.


PS- I didn't get that Code for America Fellowship. :(

Don't Mind me, I'm Just Being...Not Evil.

So...yeah, Google hangouts has some cool new stuff.

Earlier today, I found an excellent new book to up my programming skills. It's called Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, Second Edition and apparently, they've been using it to teach Intro to Computer Science at MIT since 1980. I'm only about 40 pages in, but so far, I'm really enjoying it. I hear the actual class is on youtube, but I have yet to confirm that information. I plan on confirming that information in a very soon.  [Update: information class on youtube confirmed and awesome]

The language used in the book is called Lisp, it's the second oldest programming language that people are still using and it's also supposed to be good for Artificial Intelligence.  So this should be fun. I'm actually appreciating the opportunity to get a look at a different language and actually working on my programming skills outside of web development and syntax.  

This week, I finished Michael Hartl's Rails tutorial, for the third time, and I am now learning about the carrierwave gem and using it to add user provided images to the Steam Truck app. I'm finally in a space where I am actually building stuff without training wheels, although mIRC #ruby has been a lot of help with my implementation of carrierwave. I'm still working on the finer points of using carrierwave on the app, but things are going well on this project. I'm currently in the process of setting up a meet up for the rest of the group this week.


[HEADS UP]: I got back in the gym, today.

Building Stuff.

I just finished the Ruby on Rails Tutorial for the second time. This time was more fun, because I wasn't in such a rush to get through it. The first time, I wanted to see everything that I could do and complete the project. This time I was willing to go a little slower and change some things up. Although, I did feel myself trying to rush some parts so I could get through it.

My next step is to read the tutorial, again. I felt like I learned twice as much going through the tutorial the second time as I did the first, but I still feel like I have a lot to learn. I am going to use this next run through the tutorial to create my first real project using the base program that I made in the second run. This time through I made a few slight modifications, like using first_name & last_name, instead of putting it in one field. I also left out the gravatar image part, so the I can allow the users to upload their own photos going through it this time. I plan to complete all of the additional exercises this time, as well as change the user experience of the app, taking time to get a better grasp on CSS & html. Well, the html isn't to difficult, there are just some things that I hadn't seen before I did this tutorial and I want to have a better knowledge of what's available. I would like to work on my JavaScript as well, but I may save that until after I finish this trip through.

I have a couple of ideas as to what I want to make this app into, so I'm struggling slightly with the direction that I want to take it in. I do know, however, that I want to add a user_name and allow the users to upload their own profile pics. The other features that I will add will depend on the exact direction that I take the project, but I'm pretty excited.

I feel like I'm finally at a point where I know enough that I can kind of relax and take my time building things. I'm still going to keep coding every day, but I'm past the introduction stage and making my way into a more intermediate level of coding and developing. Even though I was told when I started that the best way to learn would be to actually start building stuff, I'm the type of person who needs to see the whole picture and what's available first, before I start going off on my own.

I also have a couple of side projects that I'm going to work on this time through, as well. I'm going to work on  STE(A)M Truck project and probably design my own blog app, which shouldn't be too complicated. I've already started on both, but I'll probably just restart the STE(A)M from scratch. This will let me practice on other projects while I think through exactly what I want to do with the one I'm working on now.

Having to type "NS" and "@" is Front of Everything is Not Ok.

This weekend I attended a hackathon at the AT&T Foundry in Atlanta. As always, I learned some new things, got different perspectives on coding, and met some cool people. That was the good stuff, the not-so-good stuff was the way that the event was structured. This was only my third hackathon, but I have gotten used to all of the ideas being pitched and then being able to join that team and work on the idea that I liked the most. This was not that. When we got there, it was basically: find a team and make something, which meant finding someone to work with, agreeing on a problem to be solved, and then agreeing on the solution. I think that putting so much of the burden on the participants made for a much less productive event than it could've been.  Most of the people at the event spent the entire first night trying to find a team and come up with an idea. Personally, my team didn't even have a viable idea until 4 hours before the judging and we ended up not even presenting. 

One of the things that really struck me about this event, was people coming to the event in teams and being really secretive about what they were working on. This wasn't a widespread issue or anytihng, just something that stuck out. In an environment where everything is going to be open-sourced in the end, I think that this attitude in non-productive. I think that people do this for two reasons: a.) they want to split the prize "money" with as few people as possible, and b.) they overestimate their idea and underestimate what new perspectives and talents bring to the project. When people come to hackathons with this mentality, their time is wasted if they don't win a prize, and if they do win a prize they exposed their idea to others on the cheap. They don't learn anything new that they couldn't have gotten form just going to a coffee shop or other work-space and building the project, they open their ideas up to appropriation, and most importantly, they don't meet new people. Sucks to be them.

Anyway, I think that my most positive take away from this weekend was my need to either learn Java or Objective-C so that I can work on mobile apps. While I love Ruby and Python, I also think that being able to convert my applications to mobile apps is going to be important in the future. To that end, I have started learning Objective-C and I'm completely missing the point. I haven't gotten too far into it, yet, but from what I've seen, I can't understand Apple's decision to devote resources to build their own languages for their applications. Ruby and Python seem like way better solutions at this point and I just really don't see the appeal of Objective-C.

 Although, I am enjoying taking some time to look at a new language. I can't really see myself spending a whole lot of time on it, right now, but I'll be really ready to get something out of my study when I decide to. I'm going to start building stuff in Ruby and Python in the immediate future, but soon..

Also, I did manage to get some cool T-shirts from Crittercism this weekend, though. 

Look, Ma! No Hands.

I wrote my first python program for my homework assignment, today, in about 3 minutes flat just going through and typing out how I think it should go. Besides accidentally using .strip(), instead of using .split(), I nailed it on the first attempt; when I looked at the output, I knew exactly what I had done wrong. My python skills pretty much just snuck up on me.

protip: .strip() was from last week's homework.

I've been focusing mostly on ruby and taking this python course and going to these meet-ups. It's funny looking back at how far I've come in my programming since January, but I also still have an amazingly long way to go...

National Day of Civic Hacking [post-event report]

This weekend I participated in the National Day of Civic Hacking at the the Atlanta Community Food Bank. The event started on Friday at 6PM and was catered by Chik-Fil-A. The first night they also had veggie wraps, but for breakfast and lunch, on Saturday, I had to work around the chicken based diet. It turned out to be a little bit too much for one of my vegetarian friends: those delicious chicken nuggets. R.I.P. vegetarian diet. This is the second week in a row that I've had my vegetarianism tested.

I had tossed a few ideas around in my head, but most of them involved being in D.C., so by the time that I got there, I was just really looking for a project to join that would allow me to work on my ruby and/or python skills. When we got there, the food bank already had about nine specific issues that they wanted to have addressed and 3 other people pitched ideas of their own. I ultimately joined a group that was addressing the need of the smaller agencies of the food bank to have a presence online. Best. Decision. Ever.

When I joined my team the first person that I met was Josh, a designer. Josh worked with the Mathew to get the overall design together and he was attending the event with his business partner, Morgan. When I met Josh the first thing I said was "this needs to be a ruby project." Luckily, that was what they worked with, so I was on board with the project at that point. [I had considered working on another project first, but I didn't for reasons that I won't go into.] Morgan was the backend developer for th business that he and Josh were partners in: Polar Notion. Morgan had wayyyyy more experience than I did and I had got an amazing opportunity to learn from him and gawk at how fast he could get stuff done. The other members of my team were Greg, Cashif, Vivianne, Mathew, Ben, and Jeff. Jeff was apparent excellent with mapping technologies, but unfortunately he didn't show up for the second day, so we didn't have a chance to leverage those particular skills.

Once we had the basic idea down, we split up into three groups: designers,

 a think tank, and developers. Morgan, Greg, and I were the development 

end of the operation, with Morgan acting as the team lead.

Morgan easily did over 90% of the coding, and that's probably understating it. seriously. He was getting things done really fast, helping me with my code, and contributing to the overall project at the same time. Morgan, also knew a lot about gems and API's and had lots of great advice. He's one of the coolest people I've ever met and just meeting him alone was an awesome part of my experience. However, my entire group was awesome, as well as the people attending overall.

What we decided to build was something that I called "foogler", even though that name is under dispute, because several people in the group wanted to call it "foogle." The biggest mistake people make in marketing is putting marketing decisions to a vote among non-creatives, imo. I'm pretty sure I was the only one on our team with a background in marketing, but that's the thing about marketing: everyone thinks that they can do it. :)

Anyway, what we made was basically a search engine to be attached to the food bank's website, that allowed smaller agencies to make a "profile"that was searchable by clients using zip codes. Other than my disagreement with the name, I feel like my team worked together extremely well. Everyone did their parts and pretty much everyone involved with the event was impressed with our team performance.

This is "foogler"

When the judging started, I was pretty confident that we were going to win, but then a team that did a SMS based application that allows people looking for food banks to connect with food bank agents through text messaging. This was really good idea, and I think that something like that would be ideal for places like Africa, where people use SMS for many commercial activities, already. I had seen this TED talk, so I immediately understood the impact that something like this could have. My only concern about that project was whether or not it had already been done in Africa by someone else. 

When the judges had finally made a decision the results were as follows:

• Fourth Place: Originally, there were only supposed to be three winning groups, but one team took on the inglorious task of patching up a few bugs in the SQL database system and they were properly rewarded with the "Honorable Mention" award. [I'm so glad that these guys didn't get overlooked. Their work went into effect right then and will have an immediate impact.]

• Third Place: Went to a group that did an Internet of Things project that was pitched by Concrete Jungle that involved placing sensors on fruit trees to determine when the fruit was ready to be picked based on bending of the branches. This would have been a fun project to work on had they had python developers and implemented Raspberry Pi. The reason that I didn't consider this one is because of their lack of coders and my lack of experience. This was definitely an interesting project, but it may have been a little bit much to take on for a project that had less than a 24 hour turnaround.

• Second Place: Rightfully went to the SMS group.

• First Place:  Team Foogler!!!!

front row(from left to right): me, Vivianne, Morgan

back row: Greg, Cashif, Josh, Ben

not pictured: Mathew and Jeff

The whole team got these sweet $50 gift cards:

After everything was said and done, we had an extra card. We're going to use that when we get together on Wednesday for drinks! I can't say enough about my experience and I'm going to stop now, but if you have a chance, you should definitely participate in the National Day of Civic Hacking next year and get involved with Code for America...I had a great time. Learning, using what I've learned to give back, and meeting new people was awesome; winning gift cards was just icing on the cake. 

Advanced Ruby Features

I have decided that buying a mac is going to be unavoidable. I never thought that I would own a mac, but Windows 8, their lack of interest in what's best for the user, and the inability to create apps for iPhones and iPads make owning one a necessity as a developer. Windows 8 even blocks you from running Ubuntu side by side with it and I'm still trying to decided whether or not I want to add this third party software to my system that will allow me to to this. [it's been 2 days] I'm seriously disappointed in Microsoft...shopping for macs online today was so depressing.

Two weeks ago I went to Octane and there was this chick there with a mac 

who sat on facebook for two hours...all of my nope, every bit.

I've been taking it kind of easy on myself this week, I think. That last chapter was a little bit taxing, interesting, but taxing. I had to take my time and take it in pieces so that I could retain as much as possible. The chapter that I just finished in my book was about advanced Ruby topics [whew!].  It took me a few days to get through it, just because I was trying extra hard to take everything in [probably not the best idea ever]. This is probably one of those chapters that I'm going to have to go back and read again...and again.  My favorite topics were probably the ones about Win32API and win32ole. I'm definitely going to have to learn more about that stuff.

Topics that I remain weak on are threads, fibers, and RubyInline, although RubyInline is awesome and I need to learn a lot more about that...and new languages. Being able to use C in ruby for hyperspace in your programs is sweet and I am also very interested in using any and all other languages with RubyInline. I'm extra excited about learning other languages now, even though I probably won't start anything new until 2015. It will probably be my New Year's Resolution. This year's resolution was learning to code[killing it, btw].

In the next chapter, that I've already started ;), I'm going to be making a bot, like Eliza. It's supposed to bring most of the stuff that I've learned in the book, so far, together, and it should be pretty interesting. I'm looking forward to working on it more tonight... after I do a little bit more Hindi. Hopefully, this will be great review for the things that I have already learned and clear up some of the topics that I was fuzzy on going through the book.

largest_prime_factor:1: syntax error, unexpected end-of-input

number = 600851475143
largest_factor = 0

(0..number).each do |x|
if number % x == 0
if x == 2 || (x % 2 != 0)
prime_factor = x
if prime_factor > largest_factor
largest_factor = prime_factor
end
end
end
end

Learning to Ruby

I've had a pretty busy two weeks. Last week was Atlanta Big Data week, and event that was put on by Emcien. On Tuesday, I went to an event called How to Become a Developer, which featured a panel of developers who talked about how they got started. There was a lot of good information from the panel. It was a little annoying that so much of the Q & A time was taken up by people who just wanted to prove what they knew, but overall, it was a great experience.

The next event that I went to for Atlanta Big Data Week, was the two-day Hackathon that they held at hypepotamus. This was a really great learning experience for me, because I ended up being the team lead, which was odd because I have only been programming for a little over 1/4 of a year now. I was in way over my head on the project, but we had fun working on it, I met a lot of cool people, and was exposed to lots of new stuff. I'm going to stay in touch with those guys.

Hacklanta 2014

As a result of the How to Become a Developer event, Al Snow and Gerry Pass put together a meet-up called Career Planning for Ruby Newbies, where we got a lot of good information about learning Ruby on Rails and landing our first job. Afterwards, we all went to the monthly Atlanta Ruby Users Group meet-up, where John Saddington had a talk about blogging/social media, and how it can affect your career as a programmer and entrepreneur. Ruby on Rails rockstar, Obie Fernandez was also there and let us look at some of his code that involved using a gem called Wisper to do some publishing [it think?]. To be perfectly honest with you, though, I didn't really understand what his code did, but It was cool looking at it and just seeing how much it looks like mine. I was a good day all around.

Now, the plan is to get all of my ducks in a row: I will be blogging a lot more and getting my programming and development skills where they need to be. I'm going to re-do the Michael Hartl tutorial and instead of doing the application again, I'm going to turn the project that I've already done into something more personal. There is also a free 6-week web development boot camp that starts next week. I plan to meet up every Monday with some of the new people that I've met through this learning process to work through it. 

Another thing that I'm doing to work on my programming is Project Euler. I've completed the first two problems and I plan to do the next pretty soon. Over the past few weeks I've gotten lots of good information on programming and web development. If you're trying to learn, the meet-ups are a strong step in the right direction.

Code for America

The next event that I'll be attending is the National Day of Civil Hacking . I'm really looking forward to this. Probably the only short coming of the hackathon that I went to last weekend, for me, was that I was the best developer in my group. I hope to learn from some real coders at this one...but I sure I'll meet more awesome people as well.

Monday Morning Update #2

...strong week.

I've been working on the Ruby on Rails Tutorial and my coursera classes. I have to say, this tutorial is much better than the lynda tutorial. I would definitely recommend never, ever doing that tutorial, for any reason.

Using this tutorial, I have learned how to properly use git and github. I got jammed up for a minute there, I didn't realize that I needed to create the repository at the website before I could push things to it, but luckily the Web Applications Architecture Class on coursera really came through for me this week, in that regard. My github is starting to look respectable. I knew that it was a good idea to take that course along side my independent work with Ruby on Rails. The only issues that I have with this tutorial involves one of the gems: execjs. For some reason, I'm getting and error for this gem on everything that I work on. This is how you fix it:

Run gem install --version '1.2.4' execjs

Add gem 'execjs', '1.2.4' anywhere in your Gemfile.

Run bundle install

Start your server with rails s and your problem should be solved.

Part of the reason that I'm putting this here is for future reference. ;) 

 I wish that I understood exactly what is going wrong with this gem, so that I could fix it and not have to do this with every app, but se la vie, I guess.

Speaking of the Web Applications Architecture Class, it is still kind of annoying me. The assignments are pretty basic and the class moves way to slow for me to use it as a stand alone instructional for ruby on rails...maybe if I worked ahead, though. He is posting the work 2 weeks ahead though. I just really don't like the class enough to spend extra time each week working on that when I have other resources. I wouldn't go as far as to say that you shouldn't take the class, if you're trying to learn, though. To each his own.

The other class,  An Introduction to Interactive Programming in Python, is going great! This week, our project was to recreate the game "Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, Spock" that was featured on Big Bang Theory. Me being me, I have to watch the first episode of the show; I had been avoiding it, but I'm willing to give anything a chance, especially since, apparently, the professors [there are 5] think that that show is the bees knees [I just said that]. I hate that show. Hate is a strong word. What I did do was go to their facebook page, see which of my "friends" like that show and proceeded to judge them for it [...not out loud or in text, of course :)]. Anyway, the game was pretty simple and not overly challenging. It's nice to have this class a strictly a programming exercise, while studying so my web development.

I'm not married to the idea of making websites. My goal is to build useful for tools and entertainment applications. Don't get me wrong, I love the internet and I definitely look forward to being hands on in the deployment and management of my ideas, but just building websites in itself just doesn't do it for me. The underlying idea behind the website is where it's at.

On to Chapter 16: Regular Expressions

So I powered through the Marshal chapter with the full acceptance that I don't really understand this shit.  I've been doing a million things to get the momentum to finish that chapter.

One of those things was the Rails tutorial, that I was talking about yesterday. Everything was going swimmingly until I got to the part about installing Rails.  I was pretty sure that all of the gems and "plug-ins," for lack of betters word and understandings, like Rails and Git were already bundled and loaded into my system with the original Ruby installation.  At this point, I'm pretty sure that I was right, but the command "subl" is not working for some reason. Originally, I thought that it was because I was using Aptana to try the first exercise, so after a little bit of trying to figure it out, a little bit of reading "Infinte Jest," and a little but of attending to my free online courses; I decided to just try it through the PowerShell, which, btw, gave me the same error.

Side bar: have you read Infinite Jest? I'm seriously on like the second page of that book.  It's so hard to read.  I feel like this guy intentionally tried to learn every word that normal people don't use on a regular basis and tried to jam it into the first two pages of this book.  This book feels super pretentious and the only reason that I'm even going to finish reading this book is because a friend of mine that I used to date recommended it.  [Incidentally, she's been acting weird.  I'm wondering if it has something to do with Valentine's Day or maybe a new bf?] Also, he is considered one of the most influential artists of the last 100 years or something like that and he also committed suicide.  The latter my seem like a weird reason for interest, but I think that people who kill themselves had to be thinking about some really deep shit so I'm always interested in getting insight into people who are in their own heads thinking to the point of taking themselves out.

Anyway, I'm basically frustrated with both Ruby on Rails and my lack of an ability to address even the simplest problems with Ruby after all of this effort.  I'm determined to learn to program, though, so it's just a thing, right now.  I refuse to give up.

Now, I have gone back to the book of Ruby...oh, and I've also started watching the lynda.com video tutorials for Ruby on Rails.  I've decided to learn this stuff by brute force, if necessary and if nothing else, I will be prepared to ask 10 million questions next week when I go to a Ruby meet up next Wednesday.  If you live in Atlanta, like me, this is the meet up: The Atlanta Ruby Meetup Group Monthly Meetup.

...happy programming.  One day, I'm going to get there.

Working through the Burnout

I'm sitting here watching the newest Workaholics episode.

The Book of Ruby is burning me out. I haven't read anything in all day. I think the back-to-back chapters on YAML and Marshal was a little bit too much; I had to take a break. Anyway, I went ahead and got started with Ruby on Rails.   I'm using this: Ruby on Rails Tutorial: Learn Web Development with Rails.  I came up on it reading this article about learning RoR: Your Step-By-Step Guide To Learning How To Code And Getting A Job In This Lousy Economy.   Although I'm only at the beginning, it's a good escape from trying to concentrate on remember syntax, and starting this now will be good for re-enforcing what I've learned so far in Ruby, I hope. 

The Rails tutorial is supposed to be based on building actual projects, too, which I think will be good for my learning since I haven't really been doing actual programming exercises since I finished the Code Academy tutorial.

I've also been taking free online courses on Algorithms, Cyber-Security, Networking, and Entrepreneurship, so that is also a cool break from the book reading. So that's what's up, right now.

Post #1

...so I decided to start writing this blog to become a better person.

I just finished reading Post Office, by Charles Burkowski last night night on the advice from James Auchter through his blog/mailing list.  The purpose is to work on my writing and learn from other people who are interested in the same things that I am.

I have a goal to become an internet/software developer...I'm starting from scratch.  Toward that end, I have done most of the tutorials on codeacademy.com and I am currently reading The Book of Ruby.  I feel like I'm learning a lot and I can do most simple things, such as, conditionals, methods, classes, etc., but I don't really consider myself a programmer, just yet.  Though reading The Book of Ruby,  I have decided that there are a number of edits that could be made to that book to make it easier for people who are new to programming.   I imagine myself doing that one day, once I actually learn the language.  Maybe I'll write my own book one day, who knows.

While I was working on the python tutorials on on code academy, I would post my achievements on twitter.  I was probably doing this just to make people think I was cool or something, but I tell myself that I am doing it to prod one of my friendswho follow me on twitter into picking up programming so that I would have a someone to discuss this stuff with.   Anyway, what happened was that I got a new follower who directed my to the CodeEval website.  This is one of my new favorite things and I am currently working on my first challenge on the site.  I needed this, for a little bit of direction in my learning.

Anyway, if you've read this far...that's awesome.  Keep reading my blog and comment often; we're into the same stuff.  I will be grateful for any advice and be happy to give mine...I'll try really hard not to be weird. Other things that I do are foreign languages, movies, cool tv shows, astronomy, and go to the gym.  I like most forms of music.