BAD WEEK, but good....

I mentioned on my Twitter account that I wasn't going to study Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. My wife wanted me to stop being a closet nerd and to be social and stuff when we went to relatives houses for the holidays. I agree with my wife all I do not stop is talk about programming and programming books.

I thoroughly enjoyed the holidays, One unexpected thing happened. My older brother from L.A. flew in on Christmas Eve and surprised us on Christmas Day. The man flew all the way across the U.S. to spend Christmas with us, the least I could do was have him over to watch movies and stay up till 4a.m talk and solve all of the world's problems in 5 easy steps:)

I am not making excuses, I am merely explaining my learning journey with you. I didn't get alot of studying in this week only: 9.75 hours (lowest ever). However I did make good progress in Zed Shaw's book: "Learn Ruby The Hard Way" I am now on Lesson 32 out of 55. My goal was to have the book completed by the time the Berkeley x course starts, so I should be able to do that no problem.

Hope everyone had a good holiday and that you've set some goals for the new year!

I'll blog in a year or so...get it:)-Josh

P.s. I apologize for the embarrassing corny joke, it's just that you can only say them once a year:)

Zed Shaw's: Learn Ruby The Hard Way: Lesson 21

11 days and counting till Berkeley x's Ruby on Rails course starts. I can't begin to tell you how excited I am about this upcoming opportunity to  learn the exact same course as those taught at Berkeley. I'm on lesson 21 of Zed Shaw's: Learn Ruby The Hard Way, There are 55 Lessons in the book and I want to complete them all by January 7th, when the Ruby on Rails course starts.

I'm hoping to also go finish Chris Pine's: Learn To Program Book, and go through it again. I want to have the main Ruby concepts fresh in my mind so as to give myself to the best shot of completing the Berkeley x course.

I will say that after studying for a little while now, there is a big difference between just reading through something and really understanding a new concept. I feel like it is more important to steadily grow your knowledge bank slowly, rather than say you completed 50 tutorials in the same time. I seem to better when I get to actually code out the example's and then play around with them a little , which is one thing I like about Zed Shaw's book, he really gets you to think about what you are doing and not just be a robot who types in code and then has no idea what it does.

I highly recommend any and all of Zed Shaw's books they have been a tremendous resource to me, I've completed his Learn The Command Line The Hard Way, which was very good.-Josh 

edX: CS169.1x: Software as a Service

I am so excited. I've signed up for Berkeley x's CS169.1x course, class starts January 7th. I'm working on Zed Shaw's learn Ruby the Hard Way book, I'm on Lesson 15. I know this class is probably going to be way over my head by I don't care I want to take it so bad, and I figure it requires 12 hours per week, I can give at least 21 hours per week, my brother Cody is taking it as well so that will help I am sure.

I really want a more structured learning format that has intensive learning, time will tell. I had a great Christmas with my wife and little boys (Ben & Ian) they had a blast. Ben is 3 and Ian is 1. Hope everyone had a great holiday.


Now back to studying people no more dilly dallying time to get some serious studying down:)-Josh

Mobile App Part: 4

I'm beginning to get a slight understanding of how this whole MVC thing works. I just fell asleep while working on my app it's 12:37a.m. relatives are staying with us for Christmas so it's been hard to study, I failed on my hours this week only 16. Next week should be better, gotta' get them up, the Holidays are just tough with people over trying not to be rude. Anyway been playing around with trying to make a Rss Reader app. Totally destroyed what little I had working, but hey I feel a little better navigating through an app now. I love coding and I can't wait for tomorrow, I'm hoping to sneak out and study before I go to my Aunt's tomorrow. Work hard people time's a wasting:)

I'm beginning to really love this whole MVC Framework, it seems like down the road it will seem simpler and easier to understand other apps you see. I'm working on how to get a link to actually be clickable on the mobile app, and go somewhere when you click on it.-Josh

Mobile App Making: Part 3

I've got everything working well on Rhodes, the only exception being if I change an app in RhoStudio, then go look at it from the command line running 'rake run:android' they won't match. I'm guessing it has something to do with proper syncing but other than that everything is going fairly well. I found a pretty cool Rhodes tutorial on how to make a simple Rss Feed reader http://www.dallagnese.fr/ . I started it, then downloaded his code to see if I could mimic his code for a different Rss Feed. Great idea but so far no luck, but I'm encouraged just to be fiddling around in the mobile arena:)

I'm thinking of making my own website soon for Cody and I to put our information on and maybe some stuff we build, maybe like a free downloads page. I've also come to the conclusion that everything is always hardest at the start. Whether it's installing software, getting in shape, or running a business. It seems that if you can just push through no matter how hard or steep the learning curve may be, then if you hang on you'll achieve impressive things. That's how it's been with getting everything to just work on the Rhomobile Framework, now that everything functions fairly well it should be nice to just jump in and make something.

I on lesson 15 on Zed Shaw's "Learn Ruby The Hard Way" book. I highly recommend it to anyone learning Ruby. I'm going to try to get some Rss Reader App working in the next coming week. - Josh

Programming Mentors

I can not say it enough: If you are serious about becoming a RoR developer than you absolutely must go onto Meetup.com and join several RoR groups and Open Hacker nights. I became stuck again on my mobile app when switching over to jquery mobile, and thankfully after attending the "South Arlington Hacker Space Night" I was unstuck.

I swear I saved 2 weeks of time thanks to Colin MacDonald, getting me unstuck. Just by being at the meetup, it feels like I absorb knowledge and coding lingo. I spent 2 days googling error messages, without being able to fix the problem, so it's not a matter of just being lazy, but it saves alot of wasted unproductive time.

I strongly recommend having a mentor or at least someone you can ask for help when absolutely stuck. Going solo is not the way to go. One of the reasons I go to meetups is just to learn new concepts and ideas, the other is to get help if I'm stuck on an issue. It's also really cool to talk to other people and hear stuff they are working on.-Stay Curious-Josh

Mobile App: Part 2, jquery mobile

I'm switching to jquery mobile to use with the Rhomobile platform and 'Rhodes'. I'm making the switch after tweeting Abhishek Nalwaya for help on an issue. Abhishek Nalwaya  wrote "Rhomobile Beginner's Guide" said that it would be  the best way to go, so right now I'm working out exactly how to use jquery mobile with 'Rhodes'. I'll keep you posted:) Didn't code much last night was extremely tired tonight is comeback night:)-Josh

End of week 7 Ruby on Rails 6 month learning journey

I put up 20.5 hours for the week, .5 hr short of my weekly goal. Good news is I accomplished a lot this last week, I installed the Rhomobile platform, made my first mobile app, and got through almost 4 chapters of: "Rhomobile Beginner's Guide". All in all I felt productive this week.

I realized last night that I will be book hopping more and more from this point on, I am now at the point where I really do need to know more of the Ruby language to be able to get through errors, and to get programs to work.

This week I basically have 1 goal: Work on my mobile app, however that now may invoke flipping through the Michael Hartl Rails Tutorial, the Learning to Program (basic Ruby) book, as the need arises.

I find that I get bored with just straight tutorials, I need to make real life projects and have a issue to work through that is real to me, and then hunt down the answer. Right wrong or indifferent, that seems like how my mind wants to learn, at least for now.

                                                    END OF WEEK 7 TOTALS:

WK 8 DEC 10th- Dec.16th 

Monday =    4 hours

Tuesday=     3hours

Wednesday=     2.5hours

Thursday=     4hours

Friday=     0hours

Saturday=     3hours

Sunday=             4hours

Week 8 total Dec. 10th-16th  = 20.5 hours

***TOTAL 8TH WEEKS HOURS = 160.75 HOURS****

Feeling good about this whole RoR coding thing:) My brother Cody is now done all his college finals, he's taking the next semester off to do this learning journey with me. With Cody's time freed up more now, he has to do a minimum of 21 hours per week as well, so hopefully that should help both of us grow quicker.

ONE FINAL NOTE: We are going to be entering the Hackathon:

Hack TCNJ 2013  March 16th-17th, 2013 in Ewing, NJ

Whether we win, lose or get last. I don't care, we are entering and going to go do this. So as prep work for the hackathon. Cody and I are pair programming together every Sunday and starting in January he will be coming with me every Thursday to the " Open Space Hack Night", My goal is t have us working as a really good team, so we won't waste a lot of time at the Hackathon in N.J. Wish us luck, we'll need it :) - Josh Kemp

Made my first mobile app!!!

I apologize for missing the past few days, I've been really busy and had a super long day shoeing over 10 horses, but I'm back on track should make my minimum goal of 21 hours of study  this week no problem. Let me start off by saying I'm going to cut back on posting everyday to every other day. Haven't lost any coding passion, just to free my studying up a little. I'll just mention both days in one post.

I absolutely LOVE going to 'Open Space Hacker Night' in South Arlington every Thursday evening at 7pm! The amount of information I get to absorb just by being around so many really cool and really smart people is amazing, I leave each time thinking: "Holy Crap this is cool...I need to learn more and more!)" I really love surrounding myself with people who are at a much higher level than me, it creates an awesome learning environment.

My app is coming along great, I've been using: "Rhomobile Beginner's Guide" and have made the sample app described in the book. One thing I would warn though is, Rhomobile is an awesome platform, you can code an app 1 time and then have it be able to work natively with: IOS, OS, Android,Windows, and BlackBerry. Amazing, but there is one caveat. Setting up and installing the Rhomobile platform is a nightmare that should not be attempted by any beginner, once it's set up it's  a breeze to use, but you can easily spend 3-4 days working on installing, goggling errors and making no progress as I did.

Thankfully Matt at the Thursday night hacking group helped me with all the errors, and he said it was not something for a beginner to do on their own. Matt is a professional Systems Admin. So he knows what he's talking about. I highly recommend finding someone to help you with the multiple errors if you are going to try and use the Rhomobile Platform.

Now that it's working, I'm having a blast with this app. I feel like a kid in a candy store, every click is like a bite of candy getting happier and happier:) Rhomobile's Framework "Rhodes" is alot like Rails, it also uses the MVC so it makes me feel more comfortable using it.

I'm gonna' play around with this app and hopefully finish this book, then sometime in January make an app, for an Acupuncturist I know in D.C. Maybe make it, then go up to his practice to get worked on and be like: "Oh by the way..."- Later Josh Kemp:)

Making an App with Rhodes

I know I said I was going to wait to January 1st 2013 to make something, but I can't wait! I am starting the process of making my very own app for 5 platforms. The process for making the app starts with installing: Rhodes, RhoStudio, RhoSync, Java SDK, Android SDK, plus others. Well everything is going fine and dandy till I get an error when trying to run my app using 'rake run:android' then I get "waiting , error , I've tried to fix the error unsuccessfully the past 2 days. I'm gonna' see if someone at the Open Space Hacker group in South Arlington can help me fix the error.

Installation of stuff is usually the hardest. Good news is: The RhoStudion Simulator works perfect with my app, so that's pretty awesome. I'll keep you up to date with how the app building goes.

By the way: End of last week I studied a total of 23.75 hours, so a good week:) Yesterday I studied 4 hours.


Here's the error I keep getting when I run: 'rake run:android' just in case someone has any ideas:)




THIS TOOL IS DEPRECATED. See --help for more information.

Align Debug APK file
rm -rf /Users/joshuakemp/my_app/bin/target/android/my_app-tmp.apk
- waiting for device -
rake aborted!
Unable to create AVD image. No appropriate target API for SDK version: 2.1
/usr/local/rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p125/gems/rhodes-3.5.1.12/platform/android/build/android_tools.rb:231:in `run_emulator'
/usr/local/rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p125/gems/rhodes-3.5.1.12/platform/android/build/android.rake:1971:in `block (3 levels) in <top (required)>'
/usr/local/rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p125/bin/ruby_noexec_wrapper:14:in `eval'
/usr/local/rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p125/bin/ruby_noexec_wrapper:14:in `<main>'


Tomorrow-Josh

Code Retreat!

Yesterday was awesome at Code retreat, I learned a ton and I really see the value of practicing pair programming with others. I was incredibly out of my comfort zone, and was such a noob, compared to who I was working with. One note if you decide to go to Code Retreat next year: Know a language or at least brush up on your language the day before.

As you all know I've been learning to be a RoR developer but, mainly focusing on the framework Rails at first, and not so much on Ruby as of yet. Now I do like the strategy I've been using but, when it comes to Code Retreat, you're not using frameworks, you're using languages so I ended up not keeping up as well as I had wanted to.

All in all though I increased my knowledge, learned about testing, ping pong testing, and was exposed to several other languages such as C and Java. I'm currently taking Udacity's CS 101 course at the moment, but, I am really getting the itch to build something, I'm thinking of an App possibly for Andriod. Not 100% sure yet, but by January 1st. 2013 I promise to start working on making something, wether it be a blog , website or an app.-Tomorrow-Josh

Delete is my new favorite word:)

My dear fellows, I suck:) I really don't know anything about programming or actually much about anything :) I however love it. I love where I am at, I love the pure joy of grasping a new concept:)

 I have been bitten by the programming bug and it is no respecter of your color, creed, standing in life,  skill level,or for that matter your abilities. When the coding bug bites, it bites hard and deep, and you are hopelessly scarred for life. I am my friends bitten, scarred for life, but with little ability (at least at this point) to actually program.

So I have decided:

I will continue and finish the Michael Hartl Rails Tutorial, however after this I will actually be taking a step back. As I have slowed WAY down on the speed of which I go through the tutorial and really try to grasp things, I've realized I really need to get a better handle of some basic concepts. Then plunge back into Rails, I have not forsaken you oh Rails. I have tried to learn your ways and have come away naked and ashamed. Thou art a worthy opponent, that has beaten me with your active records, Ruby, and Validators.

However:

My tail may be tucked between my legs for now, but I shall rise with a vengeance after I have regrouped and licked my wounds. Your day of defeat is surely coming, when I shall beat you and trod you under foot you insolent dog you.

 After trying to understand Rails more and more I've realized I need to get a better Computer Science Foundation and not rush things. If I'm not a developer in 6 months then so be it, but I want to one day be a really good developer and not a hacked together piece of crap.

 I'm thinking of taking one of www.Udacity.com courses probably CS 101. I've always wanted to but always thought "But this isn't RoR" but, in fact it is, if I don't comprehend the basics how can I grasp more and more abstract concepts. I was going to start making a complicated blog as my next learning assignment, but for now I think I'll take a step back to the basics.-Tomorrow-Josh

Halfway through Chapter: 7 Michael Hartl Tutorial

Great time studying. 4.5 hours today 5.75 hours yesterday, it's been a great week for studying:) I listened to 1 hour or so of Podcasts last week on Ruby, I don't know if those should really count for studying or not, because it's not hands on. I think what I'll do is just mention if and how much time I spent that week listening to Podcasts but, not count it as regular study time.

I have one testing syntax error I can't get rid of no matter how much time or effort I put into, I'm gonna' ask someone to take a look at it tomorrow at the Thursday night Space Hacker group in South Arlington, so hopefully I should have that fixed.

It's 12:52a.m. and my vision is blurry time to hit the hay:)- Tomorrow-Josh

Untreatable Code Addiction

I am so excited, I finally got the very basics of this whole Rspec testing. I've spent the last 2 hours on Chapter 3 of Michael Hartl's Rails Tutorial, just playing with the testing adding code, changing code then running it. It's quite addictive sometimes I'm like "Holy crap!...that's not supposed to do that" then 5 minutes later "Oh yeah it does" :)

You hear people talking about Adrenaline Junkies that are addicted to exercise for the buzz they get, or runners that get the "runners high", well I've just realized programs are code addicts, there is a certain feeling when you finally figure something out (regardless of how small or insignificant it is) that is absolutely addicting.

Now when I meet a super smart nerd who never showers or brushes his teeth I know why....he's a recovering coding addict as to which there is no cure. The problem is: The worst addicts who need the most help, get paid the most and are the most in demand, so there is little chance of recovery.

I'm afraid I am in the early stages of code addiction, no use fighting it so head down and fingers clicking away, if I fix one more error or line of code, maybe just maybe the feeling it will go away:)   -Tomorrow-Josh

P.S. Here's some of the tests I was running today:)





Joshuas-MacBook-Pro:test_app joshuakemp$ bundle exec rspec spec/requests/test_apps_spec.rb
..FF..

Failures:

  1) Test App Help page should have the h1 'Help'
     Failure/Error: visit '/static_pages/help'
     ActionController::RoutingError:
       No route matches [GET] "/static_pages/help"
     # ./spec/requests/test_apps_spec.rb:22:in `block (3 levels) in <top (required)>'

  2) Test App Help page should have the title 'Help'
     Failure/Error: visit '/static_pages/help'
     ActionController::RoutingError:
       No route matches [GET] "/static_pages/help"
     # ./spec/requests/test_apps_spec.rb:27:in `block (3 levels) in <top (required)>'

Finished in 0.22048 seconds
6 examples, 2 failures

Failed examples:

rspec ./spec/requests/test_apps_spec.rb:21 # Test App Help page should have the h1 'Help'
rspec ./spec/requests/test_apps_spec.rb:26 # Test App Help page should have the title 'Help'

Randomized with seed 49936

Joshuas-MacBook-Pro:test_app joshuakemp$

Michael Hartl's Rails Tutorial- START OVER:(

After sleeping last night, and Acupuncture this afternoon, I feel much better about messing up all my progress on the Michael Hartl Rails Tutorial:) I have decided to start over from the beginning of the tutorial, which I am now happy about, I'll explain my thoughts below:

Yesterday's: DARK THOUGHTS:


* " I suck, I can't believe I messed this up."
* " I've been doing this tutorial forever, I'm never gonna' finish, I should just copy and paste."
* " I'm never gonna' get everything down."
* " This looks bad, anyone reading must think I'm sooo slow."



Today's: THOUGHTS:


* " It doesn't matter if it takes me a long time to finish the tutorial, it's not about copying and pasting really fast to finish. It's about Comprehension and grasping the concepts well, which takes time.

* " Is it better to blaze through lots of tutorials and "look busy" or to really "get it" and keep studying and not worry about how many tutorials I've done."

* " I LOVE PROGRAMMING...I don't care if it takes me the rest of my life to learn RoR, I enjoy the language and learning, so at some point I should hopefully be good enough to be employed as a Junior RoR Developer, so until then. Study, Study, Study.


If anyone else is studying RoR, and needs help or a studying partner, e-mail or twitter me, I'd love to help. If anyone has any suggestions or advice, on anything regarding learning RoR, I'd love it if you left it in the comments. Thanks for Reading my Ramblings:) -Tomorrow -Josh

Github is like a creeper:(...and the GOSU GAME IS DONE!!!

Github is like a creepy old man, just waiting for an opportunity to mess with you. Github, Github, Github where do I begin? So I was 1 page away from being finished Chapter 6 of Michael Hartl's Rails Tutorial but I had an error while testing. I pair programmed with my brother Cody today for around 3.5 hours. We finished the game finally after much trouble shooting, so happy to have stuck with it and finished, we learned alot more about finding errors.

My brother Cody finds my error, and I'm like sweet I'm good to go, but then the 'TDD' comes back with 30 examples 15 errors. So I know it's wrong somewhere. After much looking and trying to fix code, I decide to go onto Github and clone Michael Hartl's Tutorial source code, I figure I can look through maybe even try running it on a local server just to see how it works.

Well a very long story short, I've screwed up my original app I was working on, because I forgot they were both named 'sample_app' and the fact that if you are already working in 1 app on Sublime Text 2 , it will automatically open the new app in that window, so I ended up messing all sorts of crap up and not realizing what I had done till I was getting weirder and weirder errors. I started thinking "This DARN! thing is POSSESSED!!!" Then I was like "Oh crap". Now I'm kinda' discouraged but I think I'll just start over and copy and paste my way back to Chapter 6, then go through it again VERY carefully and methodically.

HERE'S MY LOG FOR 6 WEEKS TOTAL = 115.5 HOURS.

wk 6th-Nov. 26th-Dec. 2nd

MONDAY = 3.15HRS.

TUESDAY = 2.5HRS.

WEDNESDAY = 4HRS.

THURSDAY = 2HRS.

FRIDAY = 0HRS.

SATURDAY = 4.15HRS.

SUNDAY = 5HRS.

6TH WEEK TOTAL  NOV. 26TH- DEC.2ND= 21         HRS.

***TOTAL 6TH WEEKS HOURS= 115.5*********

Oh, I decided to take a break while working on errors, and did a little tutorial on Sinatra, kinda' cool not really sure of the benefits or how I'd use it but still cool to know a little more:)

HEY make no mistake, I LOVE CODING, I'm just a little disappointed for having messed all my work up, but hey I'm that little bit smarter about cloning a Repo. and not getting them mixed up:)-Tomorrow-Josh

South Arlington Space Hacker

Went to the South Arlington Space Hacker. I was totally impressed I don't think I've ever been in a room full of that smart of people before, learned so much and had so much fun. Sorry for missing a day posting. I'm at 16 hours of studying for the week so far, had one day I was super sick and the other I was lazy and watched '24' with my wife.

However I am planning a long pair programming session with my brother Cody tomorrow so I expect to meet the 21 hour minimum. Despite a few setbacks, this has been a very productive week, I've gotten stuck and unstuck more times than I'd like to admit, but with each Google search my knowledge bank is getting just that tiny amount better, so I am happy.

I debated on saying anything, for fear of being critical but I feel it is my duty to speak the truth to help out other aspiring RoR developers:

I am very disappointed with Mattan Griffel''s Skillshare class "One Month Rails". I finished the entire 3 week course in 2 days, with hardly any sweat. The only sweat I did have was from a Gemfile error of his. In the "Learn to Code: One Month Rails" Promo on Skillshare's website, Mattan promises to:

• How I learned to code using Ruby on Rails in less than one month with NO experience (and went on to win a 300-person hackathon by myself!) and how you can too
• The secret resources that developers don't tell other people about that can cut down the time to build your product by over 50%
• How you can be in demand, get job offers from almost every company you talk to, work from home and finally have the life you've always dreamed of. 

This class falls grossly short, and that's not just my opinion I met up with a couple fellow students and they both felt that the class was WAY over hyped and did not deliver. 

Now I don't have any problem with making good money teaching a class,($30,000 in this case) but, what bothers me is this class is basically chapters 1 & 2 of Michael Hartl's Rails Tutorial.

 I tweeted Mattan to ask if he was going to have anymore on Freelancing or how to cut your time to build your product by 50%, and his exact words were "Come again?". I waited a couple days to wait and see if he'd say anything more, but clearly that's not the case.

So here's my warning to anyone who is thinking about taking this class in the future: If you'd like someone to help you through the first Chapter or so of Michael Hartl's Rails Tutorial, than by all means sign up, otherwise order Michael Hartl's Rails Screen Casts.

Anyway had to get that off my chest. I am in love with coding and making GREAT progress, I have 1 error to get through tomorrow(since it's 1a.m. now) and then I will be on Chapter 7 of Michael Hartl's Rails Tutorial:)-Tomorrow-Josh

NOVA ARDRONE Hacking.

Yesterday I went to NOVA ruby's "ARdrone Hacking" in which we saw/watched/suggested what code to run to get the drone to fly up or down left or right or what have you, very interesting and informative. My favorite part however was talking to Keith, and Andrew about some issues I was having with the rails console and database, and the problem with lesson 10 in the "gosu" Gem game. Keith was able to find the error in about 5 seconds:) I was missing " , :laser" in the attr_accessor in player.rb. Apparently that's the error in the original code.

 Enjoying Mattan Griffel's Skillshare class, it's supposed to take roughly 3 weeks. but I already finished first of 3 sections. so now I'm on to number 2, it's basically sorta' like a Michael Hartl Rails Tutorial just a little different, at least so far, that may very well change.

We are making a web application as are assignment for the class, I've decided to make a blog for myself, I'm not sure if I'll end up actually hosting it. I think I would have to buy my own domain, which would then be kind of confusing to switch over, we'll see, but I'll put it up on Github by the end of class.

Hey if anyone knows of any upcoming Hackathons in the general D.C. area please let me know, in the next month or so my brother Cody and I are going to try and compete in one, I'm sure we'll lose but, who cares experience is what we want at first.- Till tomorrow-Josh

Day 1 of Mattan Griffel's Skillshare class:

I studied for 3.15 hours today. Watched all of the videos for the Skillshare class, I knew all they went over so far, but I did pick up a couple col things that I didn't really get before, always god to hear a new perspective.Tomorrow-Josh

Finished Chapter 5 of Michael Hartl's Rails Tutorial!!!

End of the week, can't wait for tomorrow. Just finished Chapter 5 of Michael Hartl's Rails Tutorial, totally getting WAY more than when I sped through it before. I 've heard it said by more than 1 person that the Tutorial should take at least 60 hours, I've heard others say 100. after doing it more than once I would say that 60-100 hours seems about right depending on your skill level. The main reason it takes so long besides it being over 500 pages long is how many errors you end up having and how good/quick you are at googling, finding the right answer? I swear that's 50%-60% of your time.

I am getting addicted to errors now though, because every time I figure out another error I feel like I am just that tiny bit closer to knowing more and being a full stack RoR developer, Silly I know but I seriously liked pair programming with my brother Cody the other day and working on errors he got and swap back and forth.

So here's the end of the 5th week totals 19hours this week. 94.5 hours total!!!- Tomorrow-Josh

Why I'm attending Mattan Griffel's "Teach Yourself to Code: One Month Rails.

Tomorrow starts the beginning of an awesome new class on Skillshare by Mattan Griffel, partner at GrowHack. The class promises to teach you to be able make your own web apps after 1 month.

If you have any interest in making your own Web applications, or maybe becoming a RoR developer, then I think it's positively criminal not to sign up for the class, I mean HELLO, it's only $20 for the entire class. $20 to invest in your future in understanding Web apps, learning the Rails Framework more for $20. What on earth can you buy for $20 dollars these days? dinner?, maybe, not much. I think it's a ridiculously small price to pay to learn  a skill that can change your life.

As you all know I want to be a RoR web developer  by my next birthday April 7th, 2013. I view this class as a very small tuition, but a big step towards my goal of being a RoR developer.  For me it was a no brainer, after reading Mattan's Bio and seeing that he won a 300 person Hackathon on his own after just a short time of learning RoR.  I thought to myself  have to learn from this guy and figure out how he thinks, pick his brain of sorts.

 My younger brother Cody signed up for the class as well, so we will be learning together. This is a great opportunity to learn and invest in your future, look at the class, here's the link : http://www.skillshare.com/Teach-Yourself-to-Code-One-Month-Rails/1289605848/826005199

This is the last day to join the class, seriously think about it. As always I will be blogging daily keeping you up to date with how the class is going and the rest of my learning journey to become a RoR developer .-Josh Kemp
http://this is the last day to join. I'll be keeping you up to date on how the class goes as well as the rest of my RoR learning journey.-Josh Kemp

Turkey Day fail:(

Good news and bad news. Good news is Wednesday my brother Cody and I did pair Programming for 7 hours, it was AWESOME!!! learned a ton. Bad news I didn't study any on Thanksgiving. I did 3 .5 hours of pair programming with Cody last night. and have determined to give up on the 'gosu' Gem game, we have decided their are most certainly coding logic errors, we even copied and pasted the author's code to no avail, we stayed up till 1:15a.m. working on it. We are moving on to the Michael Hartl Rails Tutorial, I'm on Chapter 5.

The other bad news, I am not studying tonight, I am exhausted from last night, my little 11 month old was sick and got my wife and I up every hour, I'm not super proud of this week, but I still love coding I'm just so tired, tomorrow I will hit the ground running.

So excited to be doing Skillshare's "Learn Rails in a Month." it starts on the 26th.-Tomorrow- Josh

Installing RVM on Ubuntu 12.04

Hey all, spent most of today googling errors while trying to install RVM on my brother Cody's Windows machine. Good practice at looking through places like Stack Overflow for errors. We're about to start continuing on the 'Gosu' Gem game.

Life's good, almost done with all the errors, Panera's is about to close, tomorrow is Turkey Day...I love coding!!

Till tomorrow, have a great Thanksgiving tomorrow! - Josh

Working on 'Gosu' Gem

I'm back to working on the 'Gosu' Gem game. I'm on chapter 7. I've found one error in chapter 5 missing 'If' statement. studied 3 hours yesterday, got too tired forgot to blog. Studying now at Panera's.
I'm working on an error in lesson 7, can't figure out what it is, I'll let you know when I do. -Josh

Can you quit your job and become a ROR developer?...this guy is doing just that!

If you want to become a RoR developer or are in the process of learning, then you need to read this guy's blog: http://www.andrewkkirk.com/2012/09/quit-my-job-learn-code/. It's awesome and inspiring to see someone take a risk, quit their job and work hard at a goal, and I'm sure ultimately achieve it:)

Well it's the end of another week, I feel pretty good about my overall understanding and growth. I've been learning ROR for 26 days now, almost 1 month, I decided to post my official Mac Stickie notes, showing how I've been logging my time, since it's been basically 1 month.

1ST Week Oct. 23rd-Oct.28th = 14hrs.

Monday = the 29th =                         1HR.

TUESDAY = the 30th =                     2 HRS

WEDNESDAY = the 31st =              3 HRS

Thursday = Nov. 1st. =                     2.5HRS

Friday - November 2nd=                  3HRS

Saturday- November 3rd =             0.5hrs

Sunday- November 4th =               2.5hrs

2nd week Oct.29th-Nov.4th = 14.5hrs

Monday, Nov. 5th =                       6hrs.

Tuesday, Nov.6th =          2hrs

Wednesday Nov. 7th =   3hrs.

Thursday Nov. 8th =     2hrs.

Friday Nov. 9th =     3 hrs.

Saturday Nov.10th =                       4hrs.

Sunday Nov. 11th =                        3 hrs.

3rd week Nov.5th-11th =              23 hrs

MONDAY NOV.12TH        =     5HRS.

TUESDAY 13TH = 3HRS.

WEDNESDAY 14TH = 1HRS.

THURSDAY 15TH = 4HRS.

FRIDAY 16TH = 2.5HRS.

SATURDAY 17TH = 4.5HRS.

SUNDAY 18TH = 3HRS.

4th week total nov. 12th-18th = hrs. 23 HOURS

*************TOTAL HOURS =  75.5 HRS**************

                26 Days = 75.5 hours Total

                              OR

                    2.90 Hours per day

Sorry, I apologize if it looks kind of weird, this is exactly how it looks on my Mac. 

I studied with my brother Cody today and worked on our game plan for becoming RoR developers and the 'Gosu" Gem, which went well, although not completed. I think we're both basically gonna' finish the Michael Hartl Rails Tutorial, then (or at the same time) do the Rails Skillshare class, then each of us build our own blogs using RoR, then possibly build my wife a custom blog for her blog 'www.gratefulwithtwo.com', then we may make a simple mobile app, and then start doing some low level Hackathons together. That's the our plan roughly for now, of course any or all of it could change but I'm dying to do a Hackathon at some point, even if we finish last I don't care as long as we end up learning stuff from the experience:)- Till Tomorrow-Josh

Michael Hartl's Rails Tutorial: Chapter:5

19.5 hours studying this week, could be better, could be worse. Wednesday after shoeing alot of horses out in the cold, I could only stay awake for 1 hour, that really messed up my times this week, by the way I shoe horses if you didn't know.

I never did hear back about the 'gosu' Gem for the shooting game, I think I'll e-mail Alberto about it this coming week (don't wanna' be a jerk:)) I 've been doing the Michael Hartl Rails Tutorial this past week, I've been going through it painstakingly slow, trying to absorb as much info as possible. I am really enjoying it, I'm just now starting Css, starting Chapter 5.

I 've also got my brother Cody on board with ROR as well, this past week he's started studying as well, tomorrow after church we're gonna' meet up at Panera and study for 2-3 hours, maybe work on the 'gosu' Gem game, not sure yet.

Really enjoying this Ruby on Rails learning Journey. I figure if I can put in enough hours, handle enough errors, and problems while still enjoying it then it's just a matter of time till I can start building some stuff. I'm thinking of making my own blog as my first project, not 100% on that yet.-Till tomorrow- Josh

TDD testing

Hey All, I've been learning TDD on Michael Hartl's Rails Tutorial, made 1 error, just figured it out.
My wife is out on a girl's night out so I'm watching the boys (3,11months) , so they wanted to set up a tent in the living room, so that's what we did. Had a good time but I can't keep my eyes open anymore. Can't wait till 1 day I can make a living as a professional Developer.-Josh

I'm a moron...this was so easy!

So I've spent the last 2.5 days working on this heroku R12 timeout error, reading tutorials on Heroku and errors, and such. So today I realize while working the Michael Hartl Tutorial that he explicitly says: the first app will have an error don't worry about it, we ll fix it later.

and I'm like how did i miss that! The only really  good thing is I feel better reading the heroku logs:)

Wow I am so embarrassed. Anyway, didn't kill me so I'm plodding along, I finished the 1st and 2nd app on the Michael Hartl Rails Tutorial, now I'm on the 3rd which is 3/4 of the book. I've already done the tutorial back in late August but it was mainly copying and pasting, this time I'm writing it all by hand and I will say I'm already picking up a lot of stuff I missed the first time around.

It's 9:50p.m. I've done just over 3 hrs. I'm starting to feel tired, but I want to keep studying, I love when all of a sudden a new idea or concept makes sense...kind of addicting. - I love Programming-Josh

1 LOUSY HOUR!

I  am going to bed it's 12:39a.m. I've only studied a little over 1 hour. I worked outside shoeing alot of horses (which is my full time job), than took my wife and 2 boys up to Tyson's Corner Mall, where we met a guy to buy a Mac book for her. It went well traffic was a mess, I just can't keep my eyes open anymore, being out in the cold all day really tires me out.

I'm still dealing with my app working on the local server but not on Heroku. I've looked at the Logs but I couldn't tell what exactly I was looking for, an error of some sort, hopefully I'll get it resolved by then.-Tomorrow Josh Kemp

Teach Yourself to Code Skillshare class

Just signed up for Mattan Griffel's : "Teach yourself to code: One month Rails" on Skillshare, I can't wait to start the class, if your a newbie like me, you should check it out, he's priced it really affordable, and he's already got like 200+ people attending. Here's the link:  http://bit.ly/PsqMOi

Tonight I'm trying to find out why my app is not showing up after I've deployed it to Heroku, it pushes fine from Git with no errors but then, when I put in the Heroku URL it pops up the page and gives the error:"Something went wrong with your application". I've tried doing it with 3 different apps, and the same thing, so I obviously am missing something, I tried doing a 'rake db:migrate' and it did some stuff but still it's not working so, I'm gonna' read some Heroku tutorials tonight, I'll let you know if I find the error and fix my app:)-Till tomorrow:) -Josh

Wow Git Submodules are wierd, tricky, and confusing...

Just after I gave Github the death blow, it springs back to life and attacks me with a dirty weapon called "Submodules", I feel like I need to be a Unix System Admin. to know how to find the darn right file and then remove not just in one place but several.

I have not conquered this beast, but I will and you will be the first to know when I have conquered.

Also on other fronts, I kept trying to; 'git push heroku master' with no luck only an error. I then decide to close the terminal and try again, BINGO! MAGIC! So I can't explain why, but the whole "Have you tried turning it off and re-starting it thing really works sometimes".

On another note, I just realized I had accidently saved 2 posts awhile ago and never posted, so I did last night. Also crazy stuff happens to your mind around midnight, I'm beginning to realize, like accidently deleting a file when you thought you were moving it, do to your brain not getting enough oxygen and telling your hands to type an entirely different message than the one I wanted.-Tomorrow -Josh

P.s. 5 HOURS of Studying today!!!...and it's only Monday:)...well technically Tuesday looking at the after midnight thing.

Almost done 'Ruby4Kids' 'Gosu' Gem Game.

I've done much better studying this week, I'm currently sitting at 16 hours for the week. I studied 3 hours today. It's amazing how much time you can spend on trying to fix an error or a text editor that's not working, and it's just as amazing how much you can get done when everything is working

YES!!!....Github you are DEFEATED!!!

Ha ha!! You have submitted, you tricky, wily, Github. No more shall I cry late into the night about why something isn't working, no longer will I dread push commits to you old Github. I have twisted your arm into submission, from this day forth thou art beaten into dust!

I'm study right now at Panera and I kept have this issue pushing a rails application to Github, I finally just figured out the simple mistake I was making, and pushed the commit like a seasoned pro. I usually blog before or after I finish studying, but I was so excited I just had to stop and tell others that there is hope after Github:)

Loving this beast called coding, even if I'm in the infancy stages. I'm still waiting to hear back on the 'gosu' Gem errors, so until then I'm gonna work on the Michael Hartl Rails Tutorial.-Till tomorrow- Josh

End of week: Reading "Pro Git"

While I'm waiting tot hear back about the 'gosu' game code errors, I decided to go back to the Michael Hartl Rails Tutorial and try slowly going through that. Well last time I had SSh key errors, turns out I somehow deleted them even though I thought I was just checking if I had some, apparently I deleted them.

So now I'm getting an error while trying to push to Github, so I've decided to read "Pro Git" and really try to understand Git better, instead of trying to avoid it.

On the good side, I did my first ever Github Repository Clone. Needless to say I was very impressed and proud of myself and the mad skills I am slowly developing:)

 When I hear back about the code errors on the 'Gosu' gem game, then I will finish that, I very close to done.

I finished my 3 week of ROR training with a solid 23.5 hours of study, much better than my previous 14.5 hours, which brings my grand total for 3 weeks up to 52.5 hours!!!- Till tomorrow -Josh Kemp

3 hours later...Not done, trying to fix an error:)

So all was going fine and dandy, with the 'gosu' tutorial, till i got an error on lesson 9, yesterday.
I have spent all day today trying to find out how to fix it.

I have deleted my folder and started the tutorial over from scratch 3 times, hoping to get pats it that way, if I had made an error, I even copied and pasting everything from the tutorial into my text editor to no avail. Thankfully Alberto Morales from the Reston Rails Meetup has been so kind as to look at the code and let me know, what's wrong with it.

So grateful for the help of a seasoned developer to come along side and help a total noob like me:)

I'll let you know what happens tomorrow, or when I hear back. I'm going to play around with the Michael Hartl Rails Tutorial for the next hour, as I am too burnt out from the last 3 hours to fiddle with the 'gosu' gem anymore:)- Till tomorrow - Josh

Almost done 'Ruby4kids' Tutorial 'Gosu' Gem

I've done much better studying this week, I'm currently sitting at 16 hours for the week. I studied 3 hours today. It's amazing how much time you can spend on trying to fix an error or a text editor that's not working, and it's just as amazing how much you can get done when everything is working. I was on Chapter 2 of the game yesterday, and I finished tonight on Chapter 10, not 100% done, because I'm still getting an error, I will figure out what I typed wrong tomorrow.

I'm going slowly through this tutorial, and I'm hand coding it in , not copying and pasting it, cause I'm trying to feel a little better at fixing errors, understanding Ruby a little better and just really learning and not just zipping through something. I like the tutorial so far.

I think after 'Ruby4kids" I think I'll go back and finish 'Learn to Program' by Chris Pine, I'm just finishing Chapter 9 except I still have to do the exercises, there are 15 chapters total, so roughly 2/3 done, that's not too bad.

I forgot to mention, I really need to work on my typing form and speed at some point, one of the most embarrassing things about going to the Rails Meetups is getting left behind, just do to the simple fact I'm "hunting and pecking" and everyone else is actually typing, and not even thinking about it. Not sure if I should start doing that now, or down the road as I feel more confident in actual coding, i usually do better when I focus on 1 thing at a time.

I don't know, let me know if anyone has any ideas or good courses, because I suck at typing:) - Josh

1 file saved = 1 hour...or "Wow that was a waste of time"

Studied 2 hours Thursday (yesterday), working on the 'Ruby4kids.com' 'Gosu' gem lesson, in which you make a little game. I ended up spending an hour figuring out how to save files after changing them.

I use Sublime Text 2 as my text editor and have liked it. However as of 3 days ago whenever I save a file after making a change to the code it says: 'Unable to save 'example file''. I tried googling and googling for the answer to the problem, and have found out that apparently the latest version of Sublime Text 2 has a bug when saving files, and the only way to get around it is to type this code into your terminal: sudo /Applications/Sublime\ Text\ 2.app/Contents/MacOS/Sublime\ Text\ 2.

With that, you should be able to save files as normal with no problem, but it takes up a terminal as you're using it. The best solution I finally found was to: After making a change to a file click on the 'save as' button, then when the box pops up with the file to save, re-type in the name of the file that you want to save (treating it as a new file) and it saves with no problem.

So I would switch from Sublime Text 2 to a different editor but I like ST2 and I really don't know how to use some of the others, I figure the time it takes me to save the file can't take any longer than learning a new text editor, and hopefully a future update will fix it.

The game is going well, had some errors, but I have conquered, now to work on it some more today.-Josh 

Arlington Rails Meetup.

Last night I started the Ruby4kids.com 'Gosu' and finally figured out you can't save a png file using the command line. I just kept trying because I thought that's what they wanted me to do, anyway got it working now, gonna' work on it some more tonight.

Went to the Arlington Rails Meetup for the first time tonight, which was good. Had a great presentation by Guille Carlos owner of http://bitpop.in/ on "Building a Web Framework" using the Gem 'gob' it was good even though I got lost and made a ton of errors, better luck next time:) Thankfully some of the nice developers their helped me out so I learned alot. Met Jim Gay of Saturnflyer.com. He was nice and helped answer me questions and get me unstuck several times.

So all in all, these meetups are well worth the hour + drive, if for nothing more just getting to ask questions and talk to real developers. I would also say the Rails community is very welcoming, I really like that.

Doing much better on study time this week. Now to code.-Josh

First Rails Meetup = Awesome!!!

Went to my first Rails Meetup yesterday. I learned more in 3 hours there then a week on my own! I'm so energized to go to the next Reston Meetup. I've now joined the D.C. Rails Meetup, and the Arlington Rails Meetup as well as the Reston Rails Meetup.

I am taking a pause on Chris Pine's book "Learn to Program" and instead I'm going to: ruby4kids.com/gosu/the-game-window. I'm taking a break, to practice writing Ruby code more, and the reason for that is Ruby expert Alberto Morales recommended it to me as a good idea, so that's what I'm going to do for now.

I studied 6 hours Yesterday, so I'm really happy about that. Excited to go to the Arlington Rails Meetup for the first time tomorrow. I also just signed up for "Code retreat" December 8th, * hours of intense learning.

I'm excited to be learning ROR....time to code:) Josh

Fail yesterday....VICTORY TODAY!

I just finished chapter 8 of 'Learn to Program' (and yes that's all the exercises too:)) I really like the Ruby syntax I see now how people say it "just works". I didn't study on Saturday, I ended up watching a movie with my awesome wife:)

Today I spent 3 hours learning and practicing Arrays. So my total for the week Oct. 29th-Nov.4th was 14.5hrs, I've got to do better, I messed up 2 days, 1 was when hurricane Sandy came through and we lost power, but NO EXCUSES! ...I will do better and conquer! :) -Josh Kemp

p.s. Ruby is a lot of fun so far.

HOLY CRAP!!!

Darn it, I'm like hey I'm gonna use the command line more, I wanna' move around some files and stuff, so I move around files, make a new directory, delete some old files, and it's all good, til apparently I ended up not only deleting the old files and directory, I also ended up removing all the files from the newly made directory, but not the new directory name itself. Man am I an Idiot!...and here I thought I was being careful and felt more confident, apparently pride does go before the fall. I'll have to far more careful, man the command line really is POWERFULL!

Okay....so I lied:(

I did finish reading all of chapter 7 except for doing the exercises, which I naively thought I would breeze through. Which I did except for the 2nd example. Here's that code finished...FINALLY!!

Sublime Text 2: View



puts 'Say hello to your Grandma'


while true
input = gets.chomp
  if input == 'BYE'
puts 'See ya\' later gator  :)'
  break
  end

  if input != input.upcase
  puts 'HUH?!      SPEAK UP, SONNY!'

  else
  random_year = 1930 + rand(21)
puts ' No not since '  + random_year.to_s + ' !' ' ...it was a LONG time ago, as I recall.'


  end
end

Kind of fun actually, I tried coding it on my Droid using the "Ruboto IRB' and couldn't get it to work, kept getting:

 '=> NoMethodError: private method 'chomp' called for nil:NilClass (root) at deafgrandma.rb3 nil

So I see it has a problem with the Method 'chomp', and I see it's on line 3. I don't understand the 'private Method' part, gonna' look it up, and tell you all what I found out tomorrow.-Josh Kemp

P.S. If anyone knows or has seen this before, feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.

'Learn to Program'---just finished Chapter 7

Studied for 3 hours last night, I went from 11pm-1am then I was too tired so I went to bed, got up at 5am studied for 1 more hour went back to bed at 6:12am. So all in all a good day.

angryboss.rb
bigger.rb
calc.rb
elseif.rb
fullname.rb
length.rb
linewidth.rb
Minutesindec.rb
reverse.rb
Secondsold.rb

These are mostly all the basic programs I've made so far. I also made a simple 'Hello what's your name style program' on my Rooted Droid Bionic, it runs 2.3.4 Gingerbread, so it's old but it runs the app for the Ruby IRB. It's pretty cool, you can create and execute programs.

I went and got my Macbook Pro looked at today at the Apple store in Fairfax, Va, the Optical drive wasn't working so we couldn't watch any Dvds or anything, turns out my 3 year old put a quarter in the drive, works fine now:)

Anyway back to studying. Till tomorrow.-Josh

Command Line- Copying and removing files

Studied 2 hours yesterday, made a couple nice little programs. Today I realized I have far too many random .rb files on my computer that I didn't know why I had or what they do. So I decided to make a new folder on the Desktop titled "Learningrb" and move a some files onto there, then remove the original file.

After some trial and error (mainly error :)) I must say I feel much better about the whole copying and removing files using the command line.

I love feeling a little bit more comfortable with the command line and getting better slowly...loving it:)
Josh Kemp

Oct. 30th after midnight...

Another sample exercise from chapter 4 from 'Learn to Program':

Sublime Text 2:


puts 'Yo, what up dawg?...hey what\'s yo favorite number?'
number = gets.chomp.to_i
mynumber = number + 1
puts 'What are you kidding me? '+number.to_s+' ???? .........'+mynumber.to_s+ ' really is a much better number!'

...And from terminal.


Last login: Wed Oct 31 00:09:07 on ttys000
Joshuas-MacBook-Pro:~ joshuakemp$ ruby bigger.rb
Yo, what up dawg?...hey what's yo favorite number?
39
What are you kidding me? 39 ???? .........40 really is a much better number!
Joshuas-MacBook-Pro:~ joshuakemp$
Goodnight = Josh tired
puts 'See you tomorrow'

Hurricane Sandy- Oct. 29th

Lost power from 11pm-3am, so no studying for me, although I did manage to squeeze in a chapter of Chris Pine's book 'Learn to Program'. I'm now on Chapter 6 and loving the book.

My goal is a minimum of 21 hours of study time per week, 3 hours per day. I started on Tuesday October 23rd. and ended with 14 hours of studying so not too bad but I need to do better. I'm counting from Sunday to Sunday.
Josh

Oct. 28th

Studied, for 3.5 hrs. made a very simple program, to ask a user their first, middle, and last name:

From Sublime Text 2


puts 'Hello!...what\'s your first name?'
firstname = gets.chomp
puts 'Your first name is: ' + firstname + ''
puts 'What\'s your middle initial?'
middleinitial = gets.chomp
puts 'Your middle initial is: ' + middleinitial + ' That\'s a dumb name son'
puts 'Not too pry, but what\'s your back name?'
backname = gets.chomp
puts 'Your back name: ' + backname + '  better than your middle initial at least'


...And from terminal, after running, using my name: Joshua T. Kemp.


Last login: Tue Oct 30 23:11:02 on ttys000
Joshuas-MacBook-Pro:~ joshuakemp$ ruby fullname.rb
Hello!...what's your first name?
Joshua
Your first name is: Joshua
What's your middle initial?
T
Your middle initial is: T That's a dumb name son
Not too pry, but what's your back name?
Kemp
Your back name: Kemp  better than your middle initial at least
Joshuas-MacBook-Pro:~ joshuakemp$

Not big, but I was happy, I didn't look in the back of Chris Pine's book 'Learn to Program' at his exercise help, so it took awhile.

I made one other program, and worked on the Michael Hartl Tutorial. Which as I said before I am going through at a snails pace this time around as I want to really try and grasp a lot more out of it, versus just copying and paste or just looking at the code and typing it, I really want to understand more after this time around.

I stopped studying after getting stuck with trying to push to Git because something is wrong with my SSH key or something, I'm going to have to figure out what I did or didn't do:)

Josh

Hello and goodnight

I didn't study last night Friday, I was so exhausted from shoeing 10 horses. That's what I do by the way I'm a Farrier by day,  I newbie to Ruby by night.

I only did 1 hour tonight mainly because I ended up having to do a bunch of horses today (Saturday) my day off because of the big storm Sandy, coming.

With the the nasty storm Sandy, I'm hoping to not work the beginning part of this next week, and be able to log so serious hours of solid study time. My goal is a minimum of 21 hours per week.

                                                           Til Tomorrow-Josh Kemp

RVM errors

Well it's 12:43a.m. Mac has 13 minutes of life left, I guess it's quittin' time:) I've decided to re-do the Michael Hartl tutorial, slowly, not in a rush this time. The first time I did it I was applying to Dev Bootcamp and was hurrying to get it done so I could move on to the next interview.

I'm getting errors to install Libyaml and no Binary, so I switched Ruby versions from 1.9.3-p0 to 1.9.3-p125 and still the same. I've reinstalled, both versions of ruby twice and made sure Rvm was up to date, found some people struggling with similar issues on Stack Overflow. Goodnight world, we'll tackle it tomorrow.-Josh Kemp

Learning the Command Line the hard way...is actually kinda' fun.

I have 14 minutes let of life on my Macbook Pro, it's excactly midnight, so I think that means it's quitting time:)

WHAT I DID TODAY:

I wrote down the 26 Unix command line commands I'm suppose to memorize, then copied them onto note cards, and have about half memorized.

I went on Treehouse and watched some ROR videos (very good).

Did my exercises on the command line, as the book has laid out.

Starting trying to 'Rvm use 1.9.3p0' and got an error, after much searching I found out I need to put a hyphen in like this: '1.9.3-p0', now no error, but I did get another error, and which I will have to continue on tomorrow.

I may end up switching and doing Michael Hartl's Rail's Tutorial, which I did several months ago, I feel really not comfortable at all.

Till tomorrow- Josh Kemp

It's been a long time.

I know it's been a long time. I have been spending so much time working and trying to get into developer schools. My wife got into a car accident, my truck's transmission went out, basically life. But excuses are over. I have decided it would take me over a year to raise the $25,500 I need to go to developer school for 3 months, then have enough money to make it, till I could get hired, total time being roughly 4 months.

After much effort and discouragement I have decided to do this on my own, Self taught, with the goal being to land a junior ROR developer job in 6 months time or at least before my 28th Birthday which is April 7th 2013, we'll see.

I am committing to 3 hrs. per day minimum, 7 days a week. I would do more but I'm still working full time and have my family as well. I hope to blog about my experiences everyday. Tonight I have been struggling with the command line so I've decided to go through "Learn the command line the hard way". Then Proceed with other things.

Till next time. Josh Kemp

Text Editors-1.5 hours for adding two numbers:)

I woke up at 6:45am today to go knock out several more chapters of Chris Pine's book "Learn to Program". I ended up spending 1.5 hours trying to get my text editor to work with the terminal, which is sad because the other night I had no problems at all.

I was using Text Mate to run the little snippets of code in Chris Pine's book, but my 30 trial ran out and I am too cheap to buy it for $50. So I thought well I'll just use Sublime Text 2, I've used it when I did Michael Hartl's Ruby on Rails Tutorial when I was trying to get into Dev Bootcamp, so no problem I thought.

Well apparently since I used it last Satan himself must have messed with it because I couldn't get ANY files to save, no matter what. I then spent the next 30-35 minutes trying to google ways to save files with Sublime Text 2 to know avail. My next approach was to try changing the default settings, which I finally succeeded in doing and got the files to save, most of the time. Another 15 minutes of trying to run the program in the terminal with no success, so I'm back to googling, after another 20 minutes I decide to try something different : the lot less cool but easier to use Text Wrangler. Well apparently the same curse was after me, no programs would run in the terminal either.

20 minutes later I realize the error is where I'm saving the file and then running the program in the command line in the wrong directory.

 Wow, what a moron! I just spent 1.5 hours, when the problem just needed me to 'cd' to a different directory. Well I didn't do any real programming, but I did reaquaint myself with the terminal and text editor so I feel dumb but I guess that was good I did learn something.

I still don't get why the Sublime Text 2 won't let me save files except in certain areas like Desktop but not in other places. I'm sure it's something simple that I don't understand yet, well that's what's cool about programming always something to learn for another day:)

Learn to Program

My wife, 2 kids and I just moved into our new place in Warrenton, Virginia. We had been hoping to ge into Flatiron School in Manhattan and were waiting to move till the last second, so things  have ben a little hectic getting a new place in 6 days.

Now time to seriously buckle down and learn. I decided to go through "Learn to Program" by Chris Pine. I've done other tutorials that are harder, but I've always heard it was good, and when I was interviewing for the Flatiron School in August Avi Flombaum the teacher had recommended going through it, so here I am.

I stayed up till 11:30pm got through 2 chapters, which have been very easy to do and understand so I'm happy about that. I'm going to be study in the A.M. at Starbucks before work so hopefully I can stay awake better, I am a Farrier (horse shoer) by day and a beginner Rubyist by night  Till next post.

Hello World!

This may not be the Olympics but in my mind it's just as serious. This is my journey to get into Flatiron School in NYC. I've tried once before and failed, this time I'm going for gold. No looking back.

Watch out people, one more Ruby on Rails developer is in training. Serious training.

 I'm writing this blog for 3 reasons: 

(1) To hold myself accountable to study. 

(2) To make myself try and understand it better by talking and explaining what it is I've been trying to learn. 

(3) To hopefully get to meet and talk to other similar like-minded learners that are trying to get into the Flatiron School 2013 spring session.