So I Took a Week Off...

...and studied Python. lol!

Studying Ruby was starting to wear me down a little bit, so I took the week off and did the Python track on Code Academy. Python and Ruby are pretty similar; I'm not sure which on I like the most, now. What I do know, is that I need to start focusing on studying Ruby on Rails. I watched a video on teaching yourself to code, and apparently, Rails is where it is currently located. So I'm going to go back working on that this week.

I'm starting by going back and doing the lynda.com tutorial on Rails and to  try to get it installed on my computer, again. After that I'm going to do this tutorial that everyone is always talking about. After I finish those two things, I'm think that the next step is  the team treehouse tutorials; they have a 14-day free trial, and by the time I finish all of that, I will have a pretty good handle on Rails, or at least, what I need to do to get a good handle on Rails. [...provided that I can get it working on my computer]

Another thing that I'm considering,  is going to the Iron Yard  code school. I met one of the founders a month or so ago at the iOS meet-up, and then I went to a presentation that he gave on building apps, last Monday at hypepotamus. I really want to go, but it's pretty expensive.

While I'm working on my Rails game, I'm going to make time to continue studying Ruby and Python. I put my books down this week while I was studying Python, but that was mostly because I'm reading a section of the pickaxe book that they recommend that you skip, if you're a beginner, but...

...not in my house. 

Skipping through books just doesn't really sit well with me: I've been re-reading the same section, so I understand what's going on. Studying Python has help me understand Ruby better, though. By thinking about the differences between the two, I get a better handle on both of them.

I think that I'm going to start reading my Python book, now, as well. I like Python, and I'm going to keep studying the language, but I'm going to have to wait until I'm comfortable with Rails before I start picking up Django, so Python is going to be mostly a hobby for me for a little while. Also, they just released a new version on Python, this week, so there's that.

I'm starting to understand what's going on a lot better and I'm really looking forward to building things. So hopefully I'll be able to demonstrate something soon.

In other news, I stopped going on facebook and restarted my Rosetta Stone Hindi and Spanish this week. I'm getting pretty good a my foreign languages. It's also a lot more fun when it's a retreat from studying my programming. I'm doing the voice part, now, too...because pronunciation is key in Hindi and I got caught out there saying an embarrassing thing on accident one time.

WHY IS INSTALLING THE MySQL GEM SO HARD??? [the Struggle is Real]

LOL...seriously, though. I don't think people really use Ruby on Rails and everyone is lying to me. I have been trying to get it to work all day. I actually got it to work once...and then it stopped working, again. I'm hoping that there is someone at hypepotamus that can help me with it tomorrow.

In the mean time, I've started reading another book and went back to learning python, too. It was driving me crazy not working with python for some reason, so I re-started the Code Academy lessons. I got a new book from my cousin, it's called 7 Languages in 7 Weeks; it's pretty good. I did the first day yesterday and I'm about half way through day 2, now. I think the jumping around between books and working on python, as well, will be good for me. I'm getting really antsy with ruby and I feel like I have a pretty good grasp on how it works. From here on out, it's probably going to be more about learning about the methods and applying what I know.

The Coding Complete book is starting to frustrate me a little bit, to be honest. It's talking about some things that I don't really understand. A lot of it is over my head, so I'm taking it in pieces. The pickaxe book is good because it keeps me learning ruby and I need it to do the assignments in the 7 Languages in 7 weeks book: the first language is ruby. My cousin also sent me Programming in Python 3: A Complete Introduction to the Python Language, but I think that I'm going to hold off on starting that one, at least until I finish the Code Academy exercises.

I guess what I'm really struggling with most right now is understanding how everything fits together. I'm not completely lost, though. I know HTML, and I've worked with JavaScript and JQuery, but I don't really understand how Rails fits in. I understand a little bit, but it's fuzzy for me. The thing is, that no matter how frustrated or stumped I get, I realize that as long as keep working on it, it gets better.

@hypepotamus

I haven't been making any entries for the past few days, mostly because of extracurricular activities. I'm at hypepotamus, now, working on stuff. It's been a good day. The weather here is nice, too.

The meet up that I went to on Thursday was more of a social...son, I was a little disappoint. Not really, it wasn't the one where they help people set up Rails, but I'm glad that I went. I learned a lot of stuff, one of them being that I'm further ahead than I thought I was. I also got a lot of really good advice on my learning process.

protip: if someone lives in Alpharetta, Marietta, Lawrenceville, or any other area that is outside of the 285 perimeter, they DO NOT live in Atlanta, and you should tell them to stop telling people that. 

The meet up on Sunday, that I wanted to go to, was actually not in Atlanta, which bothers me a little but :). Too many people from the outskirts of Atlanta like to tell people that they live in Atlanta and that the areas around where they live are called "Atlanta." As a result, they set up meet ups called "Atlanta Ruby Users Group" that aren't actually in Atlanta [okay, maybe that one was in Atlanta, but just barely]. So yeah...I missed that particular meet up.

I have been working on my coding, though. I've finished the code academy stuff and started reading the the pickaxe book. I think this one is better...it could be because I've know more now and therefore I understand the topics, but I doubt it. I don't regret reading The Book of Ruby, first, though. Before I started reading this I was planning on re-reading TBoR, reading this one is a better idea. I also found a list of books to read, so I won't be starving for reading material any time soon.

The good news is that the more time that I spend learning, the more I understand and am comfortable with. That isn't anything groundbreaking or anything, but sometimes when you get bogged down into learning something new and challenging, you forget that eventually it's going to click and it's going to be awesome.

Making Progress

I'm still going and getting more comfortable with ruby; I'm about 70% of the way through the Code Academy stuff, now.

 I've been working more on my program and doing a lot of thinking it through. The more I do it, the more I'm enjoying programming. It's much better when you know more about the language and don't have to spend 5 to 10 minutes thinking about basic syntax.

Investing time in learning something useful that you can apply is completely worth it.

I'm really looking forward to this meet up tonight. I can't wait to get my Rails set-up, so I can start doing those tutorials and maybe I'll  meet some cool people, too. This is coming at a good time in the learning process, for me: I won't be just sitting there like a deer in the headlights, and I may actually have some good questions. I just looked up the location, it's going to be here: Octane.  28 people have RSVP'd so it should be pretty cool.  It looks like there are a lot of pretty new people, too.

Reviewing My Ruby Skills with Code Academy

I went to Code Academy to create a new account [because they do not let you reset the lessons], but fortunately, I had already set up a second account and I just had to start doing the lessons. I'm 24% of the way through now, which equates to 58 exercises in.

Doing these exercises is better now, because nothing is new, and more fun, because I'm experimenting as I go along. For instance, the last lesson that I did asked my to simply create and array, called my_array using the numbers 1 through 5.  I could have handled it like this:

my_array= [1,2,3,4,5]

...and been done with it. Instead of doing it like that, I went ahead and broke it down like this, right here:

my_array= []

for i in 1..5
    my_array<<i
end

Yeah...I'm feeling myself. Anyway, I think that this is the best possible route, for me at this point. I tried to do the Ruby tutorial here, but they started talking about having Apache Web Server and, to be honest, I'm not quite ready for all of that, just yet.

I'm trying to make a program that keeps a "to do" list and it's giving me a hard time. A lot of the problem is that because of the way I went through the material in the Book of Ruby, my reading of programs is much better than my writing. Sometimes it's hard for me to remember the exact syntax of what I want to do, so I think going through Code Academy, one more time, will help to cement the way things work in my mind when I'm writing code from scratch.

For instance, I was trying to write a simple program for my if, elsif, and else statement exercise where it gives you messages when you chose any number except "7." This was my program:

print "Enter a number between 1 and 100:"
number= gets.chomp
if number > 25
   puts "Way off!"
elsif number < 25 && !7
   puts "Nope, but close"
else
   puts "Correct"
end

...or something like that. The problem was that Ruby was evaluating "number" as a string and I couldn't figure out how to change that. I used number.to_i!, but that didn't work. The bad news is that I never figured it out; the good news is that now I know about something specific that I need to learn.

Once I've finished the Code Academy tutorial, I will start back on the other tutorial that I mentioned previously. I'll be more comfortable with learning about Apache and web servers and other stuff once I'm sure that I have the basic programming stuff done.