Logged my most hours in a week yet, 28 hours and 25 minutes. I spent an additional 2 hours working with my brother on how we are going to make some software for a friend and collect some data, so I wasn't coding but I was figuring out what pages we'd need, how a user would log in, anyway so I had a really productive week, lots of nights where my eyes got blurry so I had to finally admit defeat and go to sleep.
Life is good, studying is good. I'm back on making the site for my friend, I will have it done by the end of this week, I promise. Then on to making my surprise for May 23rd :-)
I've spent a lot of this week working on errors, I feel like it may be faster to program with someone else, but in the same token, you have to struggle a certain amount to really understand what you're doing, so yeah for errors!
No more time for chit-chat, back to studying, onward and upward! - Josh
P.S. I think the true mark of an aspiring programmer is you must fall asleep at your computer and have your wife wake you up and say: "Let's go to bed", oh there's not a better feeling than falling asleep on the job :-)
Monday, April 29, 2013
Week 27 = 560 hours 25 minutes of learning Ruby on Rails!
Friday, April 26, 2013
Learning Ruby on Rails Day: 185
Wednesday, April 24, 2013
Officially 6 months learning Ruby on Rails = 537.5 hours studying!!!
I am officially at 6 months, I am very excited to have made it this far. I am 100% in love with coding at this point, I still have an endless amount of things to learn, but I absolutely love the journey!
I'm going to be waiting till the May 3rd or 4th to launch my friends landscaping website, and the reason is, I need to work more on my CSS and JavaScript skills, so I'm taking a really good course through Lynda.com and loving it.
I was finishing up the functionality of the landscaping site and realizing that the CSS was not turning out the way I wanted it to, so I decided to take an extra week to put something out that I would be proud of.
This blog started 6 months ago, as a way of holding me accountable to study and then to write about what I was learning. In the spirit of transparency I will be showing my entire Mac Stickie Note hourly chart I use to keep track of the time I spent studying. These Stickie Notes are unedited just how they look on my computer. Sorry it's so long and weird but here it is:
Monday, April 22, 2013
End of week 26 = 532 hours!!!
Saturday, April 20, 2013
CODING: Confessions of an Unlikely Developer
When I was a teenager I thought about learning to become a software developer and wanted to but I was told I would be no good at it even if I tried, because I was lousy at math. It took me forever to say to myself "Well I may not be good at math, but I'm just gonna' try working on this Html".
Well I made a very crappy profile that had my name a yellow background and my picture. I was very happy. I thought "Maybe I can be a Web Designer, since they don't really code much." So I started using 'Gimp' and reading articles about how to become a Web Designer.
As time went on I realized, to work at NASA, making complicated Algorithms or making computer games, then yes I would really need to know higher levels of math.
That realization was my "light bulb" moment, when I realized that I could make websites without having to know high level math, embarrassing I know, but it's the truth. Getting past my fear of math has been like an adrenaline rush for wanting to become a really good Ruby on Rails developer one day.
I say this to encourage anyone else who has been told you need to be good at math to be good at coding. That is simply not true, with enough hard work I think virtually anyone can learn at least a high level programming language.
To me learning to code is like Chess. You have an 'opening' game, a 'middle' game and hopefully if you win an 'ending' game strategy. When you make your first move with a pawn, you have to think ahead 5 - 6 moves and plan out what you are going to do and also what your opponent is trying to do or might do.
Programming is about taking a real world problem and breaking it down into small bite sized chunks to work with and then making a series of steps to fix the problem.
All the best programmers I know like: +David Bock, +Colin MacDonald, +Jim ,Gay , @keithrbennett, +Matthew Gallagher, @Robbkidd, @michellekoeth, +Guille Carlos when I have a question or idea, immediately start by clarifying what I want to do. Then work backwards to break it down into small pieces and then give me possible ways to make it work.
P.S. By the way, I may suck at math, but I'm good at chess, maybe that's why I like programming so much, who knows :-) -Josh
Thursday, April 18, 2013
Learning Ruby on Rails @ 520.5 hours: 1% better
Recently I've come to the realization, that pair programming is good, but I need to struggle on my own for a while. What I mean by that is when I work with other programmers I learn an incredible amount of information and new things at a really fast rate, however for me at 520.5 hours of learning/study Ruby on Rails I personally need to struggle.
I need to find the answer to the error message.
I need to train my mind to realize common errors, which are really caused by simple typos.
I need to go through Stack Overflow and learn the fine art of skimming a lot of information quickly to see if the error message I have matches the one on Stack Overflow.
Good programmers may poo-poo this point, but I swear in my experience of having really good coders helping me fix errors, everyone of them were like wizards scanning through the error messages and then rapidly scanning through Stack Overflow. I think maybe it's subconscious at this point. I don't know but I've noticed really good programmers do it, so I am going to learn to do it.
I need to say goodbye to tutorials and hello to fixing real world problems, helping people who need websites, even if the websites I make suck compared to what someone else could have made. Going through the process of making something and getting it up to Heroku, and give myself a specific amount of time, and just do it, no excuses.
For the first time ever today, I got my first "coding headache". I seriously could not figure out why the 'carrierwave' gem was not showing my images, I had re-watched 'Railscasts' several times, I had made 4 sample apps and I still couldn't figure it out and I literally was like "WHY ISN'T THIS WORKING! YOU SHOULD BE WORKING!!!".....
...After my little mental fit subsided I realized getting angry at computer code solves nothing, so I decided to work on it later once I wasn't so freaked out to get it done. That's one of the down sides of having aggressive goals (sometimes it puts too much pressure on me) but I feel like in the real world there are going to be deadlines where you can't say, "I need more time".
I am SO psyched right now about coding, I am totally excited to get home after work and open my Macbook Pro even if it's at 10p.m.
I have an idea that I am absolutely burning to work on, but I really don't know if it can be done. I am certainly not skilled enough yet to do it on my own, so everyday I tell myself I need to get 1% better at this whole Ruby on Rails thing so I can get 1% better tomorrow. Maybe that's dumb, but that's what motivates me and excites me to want to learn and absorb more knowledge.
Everything is building to a crescendo when one day I am a Rails developer who actually knows what the heck he's talking about. I also want to make this idea and it won't happen till I am about 1000% better.
Enough of the chit-chat, time for some click-clacking on the computer. Stop making excuses and start make something. Anything - Josh
Wednesday, April 17, 2013
Learning Ruby on Rails Day 176 = APIs
How hard could it be to talk to another website and get some information? Actually fairly hard and at least for me slightly complicated :-) My friend Peter who's site I'm making wants to be able to upload photos of recent work he's done right from his phone, while he's out working.
I have failed on that front, I tried using a Facebook embedded link but you still have to log in and make a badge for each photo, and the badge looks really ugly up on the site. I tried Flickr, but again you have to make a little Flickr image and paste the code into the views file.
Instagram looked promising and I registered the Landscaping site with their API, but I am sadly lost on all the functions and features of the API. So I've decided to use the 'Devise' and 'Carrierwave' gems, so that Peter can log in and upload any image from his computer fairly easily.
That's not uploading from his phone but he will at least have the functionality to upload new images on his own. As I get better at this whole Ruby on Rails thing, I'll go back in and probably use Instagram to upload his photos.
On the positive front, I am so impressed with how easy 'Devise' makes authorization, I have used it a little on another project, but I really didn't "get it" but now I really appreciate a lot more of the magic that it does.
I spent 4 hours studying/learning today with not a lot of website progress to show for it, but I did get my feet wet learning a little about how APIs work, I really want to understand how to use APIs more, and not just the main ones like Facebook, Twitter, and stuff.
A shout out of thanks to +Isaac Cambron for helping me and giving me tips to understand APIs better, the man's a genius, check out some of his stuff: http://drunkencoder.net/.
I just want to say, how impressed I've been by the whole coding community and especially the Ruby on Rails crowd, I haven't recieved anything but support and kindness from the very start of learning to code and for that I am very grateful.
Okay back to my sad website :-) Josh
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
Learning Ruby on Rails Day: 175
Working on my friend Peter's landscaping site this week, coming along fairly well. I am making 6 pages for the site that are just plain static. On the "Contact" page I am having a "Service Request" form you fill out that will send an email to Peter , so he can check it on his phone, without having to log into the site or anything.
The "Portfolio" page will show recent pictures of work done, and what I'm trying to do is embed a link from his company's Facebook page, and have any new pictures he posts there automatically uploaded to his "Portfolio" page, I also want to show the newest photos at the top of the page, so as he uploads more and more photos, they don't go to the bottom of the page where no one will ever see them.
I'm surprised the Sass and Css problems I am having, it really is a whole different animal than backend developing, anyway with enough tweaking I'm sure I'll have it looking half way decent.
I'm getting the main content for the "Home" & "About" page and the domain name from Peter this week. I'm going to meet up with him Saturday or Sunday and show him what I've got, then tweak it some more, and hopefully have it ready to put up online on April 27th or 28th.
I'll of course put up a link to the site when it's done so you can see what it looks like. I need to learn more about APIs, how to talk to other sites and how to get information form them, I feel like if I knew how to do that well, I could take my development to a new level... anyway time to code.
-Josh
P.S. Here's 2 sample pics of the "Home" page and the "Contact Form".
Saturday, April 13, 2013
Week 25 = 503.5 hours of learning Ruby on Rails!!!
I have hit 502.5 hours of studying/learning Ruby on Rails and I still have tomorrow to study till the official end of week 25. I can't believe I stuck with it this long and got to 500 hours!!! I feel like I am getting better for sure, 10 days left till I hit 6 months!
I have a confession to make. I don't think I'm ready to be a Junior Ruby on Rails Developer just yet. I'm not admitting defeat, or lacking in confidence. I feel really good right where I'm at, I have not tried to seek employment, and I don't intend to till May 23rd. I'm giving myself 1 more month to get my portfolio of work up. I really need to make some more stuff on my own.
I am going to be adding another page on this blog titled "Portfolio", on which I will display some websites I have built or helped build, also a link to my Github Repository. I am currently working on 2 websites, and I hope to have 2 more finished and up for display on this blog by May 23rd.
By May 23rd, I will have at least 600 hours of Ruby on Rails training, and 4 sites that are deployed in use to show, hopefully that will be enough to land a Junior Ruby on Rails position. I'm excited to be working on actual projects instead of homework, it's more fun to me.
Be assured that I am not saying I have failed. On the contrary, this blog has had over 5,000 page views, from over 70 countries, and I've received emails from people in: India, Spain, Madrid, Czech Republic, France, Poland, and from lots of people here in the States. I just feel like I need a little more time, so my surprise post with a link, will be on May 23rd instead of April 23rd.
I had a great week studying and have the mock up roughly finished for my friend's landscaping site. I'm going to sit down and show him the first version of the site tomorrow at "Ben's Chili Bowl" in D.C. Then me and the family are going to look at the Cherry Blossoms :)
Have a good week, and I'll keep you up to date on the landscaping website! - Josh
500 hours!!!.... Take that Rails! :-)
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
Learning Ruby on Rails Day 169: Stay the Course!
It's funny as you push really hard for a goal, how many things will all of the sudden pop up and try to distract you or knock you off course. I don't even mean bad things, even good, like what happened to me yesterday.
I am as you know trying to get out of being a professional farrier and transition into being a Junior Ruby on Rails Developer. As a farrier I do a really good job and have no shortage of work. I work on Millionaire's, Veterinarian's, Trainer's, and even Dressage Judge horses so I could very well just keep on doing what I am doing, but that's not what I want.
As the Summer approaches and things get busier and busier for me, I must fight for my 21 hours of studying per week! Today is catch up day. I am falling behind this week, so I will get in 6 hours of studying! I will write a blog tomorrow, and let you know how I did.
One final note, back on Oct, 23rd I decided to blog to keep myself accountable and to show others that this can be done and you can get hired after 6 months. Well I have a surprise for you all on April 23rd, I will be posting a link and a very short message. You will get to see if my creative idea works. It isn't 100% original. I heard about it in January and decided I would try it just to see what kind of response it would generate, then tell you the results. Hopefully it will be an encouragement to us all to keep learning/studying and not give up on your goals.
So stay tuned for the surprise on the 23rd. Now time to kick some butt studying :) - Josh
Monday, April 8, 2013
Learning Ruby on Rails end of week 24 = Total hours of studying 484.50 !!!
Yes 2 weeks left on my 6 month learning Ruby on Rails journey, excited! I almost have 500 hours!
I put in 65 commits into the Web Application last week, and I'm sorry to say I am scrapping the project. My brother +Cody Kemp will continue to work on it on his own, so I'll let you know when it's done.
I decided to stop working on the Web Application for 2 reasons: (1) The business model to generate income form this particular Web Application is not going to work like I thought at all. (2) I may have the opportunity soon to work on something really cool that I've always wanted to make, not sure yet if it's definitely going to happen or not but I'll let you know.
This week I am working on making my friend's landscaping business website, I want to have the rough mock up done by this weekend, I'll post pictures up as it comes along. I'm beginning to understand what makes Rails so powerful, it shows it strength best when dealing with web site's that have 'multitenancy' (look it up, I did opened my eyes to the world of Rails).
I guess I had always thought of web sites as being static bill board style web pages. If that's all you need, than Rails is really not going to shine as good as say a Static content generator like 'MiddleMan'.
Anyway learning more and more, and still feeling like the more I learn the less I know. I guess this is when you reach a point of knowledge and understanding , that you just start beginning to get an idea of how much you DON'T KNOW, so I'm taking that as a good sign :) - Josh Kemp
Saturday, April 6, 2013
Learning Ruby on Rails Day: 165
My birthday is tomorrow I turn 28. It's amazing what you can learn and accomplish in 6 months if you put you mind to it ( not to mention hard work and time) :) When I first started learning to program, I had absolutely no clue or idea of anything that I wanted to make, I just wanted to learn to program. In the last month I've all of the sudden had a surge of ideas for things I want to build, I wonder if that's how it is with other programmers as you begin to understand things a little better, or is it just me?
One question I was thinking the other day: "How long does it take a professional Ruby on Rails Developer with 3-5 years of experience to make a basic website?" Of course the term basic is incredibly vague, but still I wonder. A day? A week? A month?
It doesn't matter I was just thinking.
Working on the pet rescue tonight, maybe a little on +Cody Kemp and mine's Web App, we'll see, I'm watching my 2 boys as I write this, they're watching "Despicable Me". Is this how others code? I don't know, but it works for me :) -Josh
Thursday, April 4, 2013
Ruby on Rails Learning Journey Day: 163
19 days to go till I hit 6 months of studying/learning Ruby on Rails, also in 19 days I promised you guys that I would have the Web App I'm making with +Cody Kemp 100% done and online for you to see. I'm happy to say that I am 58 commits into the project so far and feeling very good about it.
The Web App still looks the same right now as the last picture I put up on Twitter. I've been working on creating a user account and validating the users e-mail and password, tomorrow I am going to be working on the sign in page, when I have something new to look at done, I'll put a picture up on Twitter so you guys can see.
The Web App is able to create secure users with passwords right now, but you can only add them from the 'rails console' at the moment. Not sure how I'm going to host it. Not sure if can I use Heroku, or will it have a really long weird URL if I do that? Suggestions? Advice?
Anyway, first things first I need to get everything finished in the back end, play with the CSS and put a little 'spit & polish' on the Web App and then we can worry about hosting.
I have just over 13 hours of studying in so far this week, it's 12:40 a.m. as I write this, I have a very busy week shoeing horses tomorrow and Friday, so I'll probably study late the next couple days. Let's do this! -Josh
Monday, April 1, 2013
End of Week 23 = 463 hours of learning Ruby on Rails!
I had to share this quote I just heard, to encourage people learning Ruby on Rails!
Quote: " That horrible feeling you get when you are struggling to learn some new facet of rails is just ignorance leaving the mind." - David Bach
I share that to encourage others who are also new to learning Ruby on Rails don't get discouraged, don't give up. Rails does a lot of magic that is hard to understand exactly what is going on sometimes.
Had a great week, studied 20.5 hours bringing my total hours of learning Ruby on Rails to 463! I finished up edX Berkeley SaaS course 169.2x on Saturday, still waiting for my final grade results.
What's next? I'm still meeting in Reston with +David Bock and +Jason Wieringa working on a pet rescue website, which is turning out really nice. I'm going to work on the pet rescue site, but also I'm going to be working on a project with my brother +Cody Kemp he's wanted to do for some time, so for now I'm working on 2 things: The pet rescue site, and an application with Cody.
I'm 22 days from April 23rd my 6 month goal. I need to keep cracking the whip learning Ruby on Rails, I want to have our web application done by April 23rd, no buts about it. I need big goals to go far, that's just the way I am. Please hold me accountable by asking how it's coming along so that I feel the pressure to get it done.
The whole purpose of this blog was to keep me accountable to study, and get stuff done, so please comment over the next 3 weeks to help keep me on track. - Josh
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