End of Week 18 = Total hours 359!!!

Had a great time working on the pet rescue website with Jason Wieringa And David Bock today, learned a ton! The website is coming along well, we just added authorization so only if you are signed in can you add or change a dog's picture or infomation to the site.

I am going to be taking more initiative in making this site, and start working on features using branches in Github so I don't mess anything up when I make mistakes. Really looking forward to this next week, edX Berkeley continues with lecture videos and a quiz. I am going to try and make some head way on the pet rescue site as well.

The time has come to familiarize myself with Gimp, I'm going to download it tonight and try to go through a tutorial on how to use it this week. David Bock showed me a ton of great tips on how to use CSS and Sass with Rails, and also about making really good comments when I commit with Github.

All in all I feel like this was a really good week with lots of learning and new knowledge, it feels like things are starting to have a little bit of a snowball affect with my learning, like I understand new things in rails a little bit quicker because I can relate them to something else I have already learned.

19 hours of study this week, I have a pretty busy work week coming up but I will do better about getting at least 21 hours of studying in. - Josh

P.s. Jason Wieringa gave me my first Github "Octocat" sticker to put on my Mac, I feel almost like a real noob developer now :)

P.S.S. I'm going to try and post some pictures on my blog, since this has been a text only blog thus far...you know spice things up a little :)

Rails getting Sassy!

Get your Rails on, yeah that's right I have made my first commits and contributions to a real world project with 2 other developers, so shut your mouth!....sorry I was feeling a little cocky.

I added a logo image to a web page and moved the footer to a partial, not nearly that impressive. Thankfully the developers I'm working with are really super nice and encouraging to the new young guy who is asking things like "git add .?" :) Anyway I got my assignments done so I feel good, but I want to know how I could have done it better, not just it's good enough to pass.

Pair programming with my brother Cody tomorrow morning, working on Cucumber, we need to know Cucumber much better for upcoming assignments of edX Berkeley 169.2x Saas course.

 Cody is going to make a sample profile site with his: name, email, and a picture, using Cucumber to test it all as he goes along. Tomorrow he's going to show me how he did it and let me pick holes at it and try to understand it better, then I'll make a site using Cucumber.

Sunday I'm working with David and Jason again up in Reston, should be a great time of learning totally excited. I'll let you know how tomorrow works out. The pet rescue website is coming along great! - Josh

340 hours of total study time in 17 weeks!

That's right, I've studied 340 hours learning Ruby on Rails in the last 17 weeks! My total hours in week 17 were: 25.75. I Started working on a project today with David Bock of Code Sherpas and Jason Wieringa  http://www.jasonwieringa.com. It's a project to basically help fix a local pet rescue's website.

Let me just say, although I know I've said it before. If you want to become a RoR developer than you absolutely MUST find some people to work/study with. I already knew that, and I study with my brother Cody and go to a Meetup every week if not more. However the learning that took place today absolutely took the lid off of the potential to learn things at a much higher rate.

If you study alone, you are learning at about 20mph. Studying/working with other people who know RoR = learning at 100mph! If you are serious about being a developer some day, then you need other people to learn with.

I can't believe how much was done on the website in just 1 day! I mainly observed and asked questions. I have 2 small changes to contribute before we meet again next Sunday. Berkeley SaaS 169.2x started on the 15th and I have yet to watch the lectures, so time to start cracking tomorrow.

Today, Jason and David taught me so much, I am so grateful. Throughout the day I probably asked 20 questions, normally I would have to stop what I was doing and Google for the answers to my questions but today I got instant awesome feedback that helped make things click in my mind. I beginning to understanding this beast we call RoR and how it really works. Study people! Times a wasting. - Josh

Finishing the last week of Berkeley 169.1x SaaS Course

What a week! So busy with: Work, Studying, Reading, and Family time. I 'm finishing up the Homework today for the last week of 169.1x. Totally excited to start part 2 . I've learned alot more about Cucumber, feeling a little better about using it.

In other news, I'm going to be working on a side project with 2 other developers starting this Sunday, pretty excited about that, I'll let you know how it goes.

This week I heard a ton of new books that I so want to read, it  feels like there is so much to learn that I  need to prioritize what I study so that I learn at the maximum rate. I would love to spend the entire week just sitting on the couch reading new books on Ruby on Rails and just Coding in general.

Enough talk, now back to the grindstone, need to finish this homework, it's looking like about 4 hours to get it all done.-Josh

Cucumber & TDD

I've finished watching all the edX Berkeley SaaS course lecture videos, about 3 hours of content. Spent Monday working on a Cucumber tutorial that involved using Sinatra. I decided to do it, so I could learn more about Sinatra. Well I had several errors and a couple mistakes in the tutorial code, but I finished the Sinatra basics tutorial without to much yelling at my computer :)

I've been working on the Nettus Tutorial on Rspec and Cucumber and have gotten stuck on the 'config.ru' file, it looks right but it's not working.

I feel like TDD is the way to go, I just don't really get it totally yet. Yes I understand write the test first, have it fail, then write the code to pass the test.  I'm currently lacking the "know how" at the moment :) Anyhow I figured I'd do the simple tutorial on Cucumber before attacking the harder homework assignments on BDD and TDD.

I'm going to try and finish the Cucumber tutorial, then on to the rest of the homework for the rest of the week. I've did finished the Quiz for this week.

 I studied 3.5 hours on Monday, 5 hours today, so it's a good week so far. Loving the learning journey- Josh