Hackathon, Meetups and More

I have been in Orlando the fast couple weeks, here's an update of whats been going on.

Tabs on Tallahassee Hackathon
- this was my first all-day hackathon and I had a great experience. Not knowing what to expect, I showed up in the morning and joined a team. We were given some basic guidelines (which can be found on the link above), put into a room for about nine hours, and asked to come up with something. Two guys on my team held senior positions and took the lead. We decided to use Angular (something I had not used before) and began working on our idea which gave information on your legislator by zip-code, then according to your own political beliefs, compared your representative to a legislator that lined up with your own political view points.

Tabs on Tally Hackathon

We did not get to finish our app but our code is on my github. I contributed to our front end but also spent time watching the back end of our app development, I was very interested in watching the pros thought process. Overall this was a great experience working with a team and I look forward to more events like this.

Ruby Jax Action Cable - my favorite meetup that I attend, this one was back in Jax Beach. Best thing was more reassurance that testing is the path to getting hired. During this meetup Eric Bundy gave a talk and did some live coding on Rails 5 new Action Cable feature.

Jax Tech Meet Up - another cool meetup back in Jax Beach, this one was really great for networking and I received some new contacts that I hope will lead to some freelance work.

WordPress Site Optimization - meetup in downtown Orlando at Envy Labs, pretty cool introduction to wordpress and another great networking experience.

Meetup @ Envy Labs Orlando

 

I also volunteered to give the next talk at Ruby Jax in a couple of weeks. My topic is REST and how it makes Rails awesome.

-John

Great expect(ations) w RSpec

The holidays are over an I have been chipping away daily. This week I have dedicated much of my time to learning RSpec and testing ruby frameworks. Searching around there isnt an abundance of testing information for beginners on the web, but I signed up for a free trial at Lynda.com and have been very happy with there 6hr class on testing with RSpec. I'm about 3/4 finished and have learned much of the syntax and theory behind RSpec.

If your learning Rails you should learning some sort of testing. It may not be necessary in the beginning, but you will need to have it in your tool belt when things get a bit more complex. Also, I feel that if you wait too long to learn testing it could become a bottle neck in your growing progress.

Also, I can't recommend Lynda.com enough. I have only viewed their course on testing ruby frameworks but I have a feeling that everything they do is at a high level. I plan to continue to use them as I move forward.

Here is a summary of what I have learned the past two days with Lynda and RSpec:

The hiearchy is important: spec file => example groupe => nested group => example => expectations is really the meat of the whole operation and once I understood that I really started to understand the big picture.

Helper methods: It is important to keep your suite as fast as possible therefore encouraging frequent tests. Now this is a non issue for small projects, but as things grow I could see how this would slow things up. Helper methods help keep unnecessary tests from running and slowing down the process.

The let method is really cool because it creates a helper method that takes one argument, which is the name of the method you want to create and then a block of code.

ex.
let(:car) { Car.new}

it "allows reading for :wheels" do
  expect(car.wheels).to eq(4)
end

you can also use subject as your helper

ex.
subject {Car.new}
  it ....
end

........and going farther you can define subjects implicitly by using a class name as the 'describe' argument

ex.
(this is how it looked like before)
describe 'Car'
  subject { Car.new }
  it ....
  end
end

*is the same thing as

describe Car
    it...
    end
end

^Here the subject is implicitly defined. As soon as it encounters the class as an argument it creates a helper method with the subject as the class Car. this works well if the subject you are working with is in only one class.

For Rails testing I learned about SHARED EXAMPLES, which is where RSpec begins to get more complex.

Shared examples let you describe behaviour of classes or modules. When declared,
a shared group's content is stored. It is only realized in the context of
another example group, which provides any context the shared group needs to
run.

In rails this comes in handy when describing things like 'CRUD' in your controller.

ex.
describe ProductsController do
  describe '#index'
    it_behaves_like 'a standard index action'
  end
  describe '#new'
    it_behaves_like 'a standard index action'

  end

end

.....and so on

Should be finishing up the rest of the course tomorrow along with the last touches on my portfolio and resume. I'll be going to a meetup this next Thursday at Hashrocket in Jax Beach, and they give opportunities at the end for attendees to put projects up in front of the group to have it "torn a apart" by the pros. I hope to have a TDD or BDD app built from the ground up by then; I'd love to get live feedback that way.

it is now 4 a.m., please excuse the typos

-John

Tech Talent South Complete, Now What?

Outside of Class

Learning to code is a journey. Let me first acknowledge that I am not at the end of that journey, and I that is a good thing because learning to code is a process, not a means to an end. Looking back, everything that I have learned at TTS over the past 8-weeks is amazing and I am beyond thankful for the opportunity. Last night I was going over my personal notes from the first week and it feels great seeing where I was then and where I am now. Over the course of this class I have built over 30 apps, learned git, github, Ruby, Rails, JavaScript, HTML, CSS and even a few things that werent on the lesson plan such as testing.

Of all the cool things that we did during class, my favorite and most rewarding would definitley be our final project that two classmates and I completed during the final weeks. We were told to make an app using the things we had learned in class; no guidelines. While brainstorming we decided our favorite thing about class was working with api's, so we looked around the web and found some we liked. We eventually choose a weather api and an event api. Two weeks of wrestling with our code we created Drink Weather, a silly web app that takes a users current location and returns the current weather, an adult beverage recomendatioin based on that weather, and also an activity according to weather and location. Working from scratch really helped cement what we had learned throughout class and the all the mistakes that were made during our creation of Drink Weather made us better coders now. We also became very familiar with working on github as a team, and how to deploy a rails app to heroku. I know it's not perfect, but we all took pride in the creation of Drink Weather.

TTS is now completed and here are the next things on my agenda:

• Test, test, test. Pretty much every dev that I have had the pleasure to talk with over the past month has mentioned the importance of testing which is one of the areas that TTS did not cover in depth (we only spent one day on testing and really only provided a basic introduciton). I understand why it is important and know I will need to be comftorable with the practice in order to land a job. 
• Learn VIM- I know that there are mixed opinions on vim, atom, sublime, etc. but after talking to some pros it does seem that learning vim could really improve my proficiency and help with job placement.
• Sharpen my Ruby- I am most familiar with Ruby of all languages with JavaScript coming in second. When getting advice from people in the industry, one of the things I was most interested in was whether I should focus on learning one language really well or spread my self out and learn the basics of a few languages. Most people said to get really good at Ruby first which will not only help with a job but also with the process of learning a new language in the future.
• Sharpen JavaScript- Like Ruby, I am familiar with JS and want to continue to improve on it. 

I officially quit my previous job at the end of August and aimed at securing a job within six months. That means I will be employed be the end of February, wish me luck.

-John

Kids Code Volunteering

Earlier this month I had the opportunity to volunteer as in instructor for Tech Talent South's Kids Code class. I have now volunteered for two of the classes and it's amazing how scary 8-year olds can be with their parents in the background. All kidding aside, I was really happy with the experience and even more surprised what one can learn when teaching others. I know everyone says it, but teaching a lesson to others (no matter what degree of difficulty) really helps you better understand the material yourself.

In the class we went over very basic code practices beginning with HTML and working our way up to basic Ruby. The kids seemed to respond well to Mike (our other volunteer instructor) and myself, and even though the material was aimed at early beginners, I still found things to learn. For example, while showing kids how to add an image to a web page, I stumbled to remember the exact syntax to do so (thanks Sublime). I can see how relying too much on text editors, even for simple things like adding an image in html, can be bad when that job interview comes around and asks you to get on a white board. TL;DR Learning never stops :)

-John

Tech Talent South Week 2 Update

Tech Talent South has greatly sharpened my understanding of many programming basics I thought I had already mastered. It has only been two weeks with the program and  I cannot not over emphasize how great it is to have an instructor to bounce questions off of. TTS runs four days a week, four hours each class and two extra office hours each day. So far we have covered the basics of Ruby (arrays, methods, hashes, and Classes), which I had studied when I first began to learn in August by reading Chris Pine's book, "Learn to Program". It was a good refresher on the Ruby language since I had not done anything with Ruby since I read Pines book and I also enjoyed being around other students during the learning process. I have also found it valuable to see how others work out the problems as they go; it ultimately helps me think about problems in different ways, something I could not duplicate working on my own most of the time.

Last week (week 2) we got into Rails which I was really excited about since this was essentially uncharted territory for me. I remember just starting out I wanted to try rails after finishing some ruby stuff but gave up after an installation fail. lol. Thinking back to that point I remember being overwhelmed with all of the information out there and not knowing where the hell to go. Being in this program really helps with that. Now I have a set curriculum with an instructor leading the way to help out when I get hung up on something.

This weekend I started going through the Ruby on Rails Tutorial by Michael Hartl, which is a great supplement to what we are doing in class. I have gotten through the middle of Ch 3, which is basically what we have accomplished in class up to this point. I have to say that going over this book after the work we do in class really helps me understand the concept of rails and how the MVC framework functions. In my own words, when you type something in the browser that then goes to the rails router and requests that page from the controller with the same name. That then, using instance variables, goes to the model which retrieves the information from the database, returns that to the controller which then goes to the view page, renders the html back to the controller and to the browser...and boom, web page.

We created some small rails apps so far including a mock university which uses a database to store classes, students, grades, and depatments. I have gotten a lot more familiar with the command line as a result of using rails as well as a general knowledge of git and heroku. I'm really excited to see what I can get my hands on this week as I continue to further my learning in and out of the classroom.

-John

Tech Talent South Scholarship

Since making the decision to learn how to program I have always been attracted to the idea of a coding bootcamp. The problem for me, however, was that I was unsure of how valuable a two or three month program would ultimately be compared to the cost. About a month ago I heard about Tech Talent South and that they would be teaching a "total immersion" course here in Jacksonville this fall and that they would be offering a 100% scholarship for the semester; I decided to apply. 

A couple of days after my application I received a call from there communications director for a phone interview that lasted about an hour. Over the course of the interview I talked about much of the material I had completed on my own, what I was currently working on, and why I had developed an interest in programming in the first place. I also referenced this blog and some general interests that I had such as volunteering and supporting the hometown Jacksonville Jaguars. Overall I thought the conversation went well, and I was told that I would be accepted to the 8-week program and would also be considered for the scholarship.

Two days later I received the good news: I would be awarded the scholarship for 100% tuition! I was ecstatic to say the least. I have just finished up my second week of class and will update with what I have learned so far, but I believe that the reasons I was awarded this scholarship are very similar to the reasons that employers higher new employees. Here's what you can do to help your chances at landing a similar scholarship or that future dream job:

Ask lots of questions- during the interviewing process the person being interviewed should be asking just as many questions if not more than the person conducting the interview. This not only shows genuine interest and the fact that you have done research on your own about the company you applied for but it also helps for you to decide if the company is a good fit for you.

This website does a great job of giving example questions and also explaining why they are important.

Write a blog- Especially if you are entering a new field such as computer programming, a blog acts as a modern day resume. When interviewing in person or over the phone, a blog will help cover in detail some of your accomplishments and progress that you may forget to mention. Don't worry about how many readers you have, writing shows comprehension, real time progress, initiative, and the ability to communicate. This post by Tim Ferriss goes into more detail about breaking into a new industry and the importance of blogging your progress.

Do your HW- Before applying anywhere, do your research That means check out the website, look up the CEO or founder, and reach out to any current employees or graduates.

-John

The Selfish Gene and Programming

This book is more of a reason behind why I am learning to program than biology. I first began reading this about a month and a half ago (around the same time I began coding full time) just out of curiosity. I soon began seeing all the similarities between natural selection and coding computers today. In The Selfish Gene Dawkins explains his theory that we evolved to the conscious beings that we are today by being programmed by the most basic life forms: genes. Dawkins starts at the beginning and describes how at one point a particularly unique molecule was formed by accident and “had the extraordinary property of being able to create copies of itself.” This resulted in the first gene which then replicated and mutated itself into more complex molecules… and, well, you probably know the rest of the story.

What is so fascinating to me is that the birth of genes is similar to the birth of computers. And, like Moore's law, evolution evolves at a faster rate the more complex it becomes; kind of like the way our technology evolves exponentially as we continue to build off of the accomplishments and research of the people before us. Now, like the way we program computers (writing code; then running, testing, and modifying it to see if it works) genes program us to survive. Dawkins calls the life forms they program ‘survival mechanisms.’

Genes are in all living things and at some point certain genes began to finding new ways to modify, or program, the survival machines that they inhabit (living things) in order to better deal with the ever changing environment.

“Genes are master programmers, and they are programming for their lives. They are judged according to the success of their programs in coping with all the hazards that life throws at their survival machines, and the judge is the ruthless judge of the court of survival.”

Enter the brain, and, more specifically, the consciousness of our species: homo-sapiens. With our highly evolved brains, we now have the ability to overwrite old programs from the past to better fit our world today. For instance, people experience approach anxiety when meeting new people. Back in the day this made sense because there was real danger in meeting strangers when living in secluded tribes. Today, however, that is not the case and with education and awareness we can overcome this uncomfortable feeling in order to better our chances at survival and the possibility of spreading our genes or finding a mate.

I like to believe the moment that we reached consciousness is exactly the same as the moment that technology will reach singularity (in theory). Once we became conscious we were then able to override our initial programming. We developed birth control, altruistic behaviors, and social cultures that typically go against natural selection. This leads me to ask the question that many today are pondering: What will happen when machines reach singularity (in theory) and are then capable of recursive self improvement? Will they defy their programmers as we have defied our genes?

Dawkins goes on to describe the cultural evolution that we are influenced by. He defines these influences as memes, which is an element of a culture or system of behavior that may be considered to be passed from one individual to another by nongenetic means, especially imitation. We are thus programmed by our genes and the memes that we have created via culture that is passed down from generation. “We are built as gene machines and cultured as meme machines, but we have the power to turn against our creators. We, alone on earth, can reel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators.” In this sentence Dawkins is optimistic about our species. He is hinting at the idea that we will overcome our natural selfish behavior in favor of deliberately cultivating and nurturing pure, disinterested altruism-- “something that has no place in nature, something that has never existed in the whole history of the world.” Will robots one day evolve in a similar way?

Besides artificial intelligence relations, there is also something beautiful about it’s implications that relate to programming. It’s extremely rewarding to have the opportunity to build something from the ground up, influencing and molding it as you would a child. Programming to me is just that, creating something from nothing that will evolve into a complex application that will influence the world (hopefully in a positive fashion). Dawkins book is a great reminder that even the most grandiose ideas, goals, and individuals have humble beginnings.

-John

Free Code Camp Zipline: Build a Personal Portfolio

This project was my first Zipline on FCC and I found it to be rather difficult because I had never heard of Bootstrap and did not have much experience with html or CSS. The instructions say to reverse engineer the example given but without looking at or copying the examples code. Even though I was tempted, I did not give in to cheating on this one which resulted to me spending about four days on this project (longer than I had expected) and about 10 hours.

The most challenging things for me was working with CSS and html. I completed all of the FCC courses before hand, but the information for these two didn't seem to stick well in my brain. I began searching the internet for help and Youtube became my best friend for this project, in particular Wired Wiki and Brian Hussey’s tutorials.

There was a lot of note taking and re-watching clips to get down the nesting concepts in this project, but I eventually got the hang of it and the fact that I struggled at first gave let me know that I needed to take it slow in order to comprehend everything, which I eventually did.

My end result can be found here, which I am happy with because it met all the credentials of the project, but I could have made more of an effort to learn how to customize some of the buttons and background images. Over all this project really helped me with learning html, CSS, and Bootstrap basics!

-John

Flexibility

As I continue this journey I am reminded many times over that flexibility is necessary when aiming to achieve any goal. What I mean by that? It is important not to become discouraged if one process is not getting you closer to your goal. In fact, that is bound to happen. What is important is the awareness that a process is not working and then the flexibility to modify it so that it gets you back on track. I have written in a previous blog post that I have a hard time of staying on track with one thing and thus not accomplishing anything.

“Stay committed to your decisions, but stay flexible in your approach.” -Tony Robbins

In order to simplify my study strategies I am classifying my day into three parts: rise, learn, and plan. The rise part I have down, it consists of waking up, deep breathing, meditating, running 2 miles, and eating breakfast. This typically takes place between 6 and 7:30 a.m.

The learning part of my day is where I typically go astray. Should I code on 

codecademy? Free Code Camp? Read a book on JavaScript? Watch youtube videos on how to code? Or search for a new resource that I have not even discovered yet??? To help with this I am breaking this part of my day (which is anywhere from 8- 12 hours) into two parts:

-Morning: I will read theory or a book on coding but ONLY ONE BOOK AT A TIME! The goal is to finish and write a blog post at the end of each week detailing what I learned from reading said book.

-Afternoon: I will actively write code. This can be anything from codeacademy, freecodecamp, codeschool, or a project that I am currently working on. However, this will be decided THE NIGHT BEFORE. Which brings me to the third part of the day.

Planning will take up the late afternoon and evening of my day. This is where I will decide what I will be working on the following day and also research any new material, ideas, job opportunities, and anything code related that interests me. This time will bleed into what I will also call “free time” which will consists of reading fiction or watching a football game in order to relax before bed.

-John

Crockford on JavaScript - Part 5: The End of All Things

Video of Lecture

In this lecture Douglas Crockford talks about some of the security threats that we face today on the web. Many of the problems, says Crockford, come from the amount of diversity on the web. Mashups (which is the combining of programs with different interests), too many languages with separate encoding and commenting, and the nesting of these languages are just a few of the complications that a browser will encounter on a typical day. Because of this the browser must do heroic things in order to decipher many web pages that then give attackers easier access to sensitive data.

Crockford goes into much more in this lecture such as what an attacker can access on the web and how advertisers can compromise security. My full notes can be found here.

Orlando

Orlando Public Library

I have now been in Orlando for a week and I'm certainly grateful for the time that I've spent here so far. Wednesday I visited my first meet up ever--a "hackathon" for a volunteer project called Lady Lake Pet Adoption that focused on creating an app that will help connect lost pets with their owners. As a newbie I didn't have much to offer via writing code, but it was a great to experience an environment of like minded individuals sharing a similar goal.

Next week will officially be my third week of learning to code full time, and there are some valuable takeaways that I have realized so far:

Learning to code is challenging-- duh, right? But you can't fully understand what that statement means until you get your hands dirty with code. Getting the code to do exactly what you want can be very frustrating at times, but when it does work the reward is immediate, which gives me an extra boost to continue on. 

Lake Eola, Orlando

Learning does not work for me by simply understanding one perspective-- this has been huge for me this past week as I started to run into my first road blocks (aka- Free Code Camp's Bonfire Challenges). Up to this point I had read a ton of information about Java Script but had not actually comprehended everything fully. I realized this when I was asked to do something simple such as "truncate this string if it is longer than the given argument" and stared at my screen dumbfounded. You don't really know something until you can actually do it and can repeat that same result over again in a different environment. So what I did when I started to run into problems was take a step back. I revisited some theory on Java Script syntax, looked over a few chapters in Eloquent Java Script, and watched lectures on YouTube that were focused on my sticking points (most helpful lecture for general understanding: Crockford on Java Script). I have learned that without a teacher that can help in person it helps to get many perspectives on things that can be challenging, something that the Internet offers in spades.

Keep it simple-- I have a tendency to want to get everything done all at the same time. The problem here is that it will make me feel overwhelmed and disappointed when I look back at the past week and don't see the progress that I wanted. Solution is to keep it simple. Instead of trying to tackle 6 things in one day, I will focus on getting one or two things completed. This gives me the ability to cross something off my to-do list which can be very satisfying.

Morning rituals work-- I have slightly altered my wake-up time since being down here mainly because I have found myself more productive during later hours, but keeping to my schedule has been hugely beneficial to me in a new environment. Every morning (after 7 hours of sleep) I wake up, splash water on my face, do a 1x2x4 breathing exercise, run two miles, meditate, eat breakfast and then begin my day. I find that if I get away from this routine than my entire day suffers.

This week has been a great learning experience, up to this point I have:

• finished 20% of Eloquent Java Script 
• 50% of The Selfish Gene 
• completed Crockford on Java Script Lectures 
• completed 10 of the first FCC bonfire challenges 
• visited my first meet up (another one tomorrow morning) 
• and increased my reading speed from 336 words/min to 552 words/min after using this technique from Tim Ferris. 

-John

First Impressions on Free Code Camp

I just began using Free Code Camp and have been pleasantly surprised with the amount that I have learned in the first few days. What drove me to it initially was the fact that it gives young coders am opportunity to build a portfolio by working with non-profits.

Breaking into any new industry your going to run into challenges. The most obvious for me being: how do you get a job with no experience? And, how do you get experience with no prior job? What comes first? FCC seems to have addressed this question by trading an education for volunteer work, an idea that I find respectable and logical.

As of this evening I have gone through the first three modules (HTML, Responsive Design with Bootstrap, and jQuery) and have learned lots about the respected languages, but more importantly, I have sharpened my "googling" skills when I run into road blocks. This is one thing I noticed when switching from codeacademy to FCC; there is an encouragement for students to figure out the problem themselves before asking for help. Although CodeAcademy's Q &A section can be very helpful, I also think that it hurt my learning when I would look for someone else's answer instead of figuring it out with my own resources-- aka the internet. FCC also has an active chat room and a very helpful community.

Overall I have been happy with FCC. It's structure is very similar to CodeAcademy, however, there is a huge incentive to finish as it will give you the opportunity to work with non-profits on real world projects. I hope to burn through FCC in the next couple of weeks while also supplementing my learning with Marjin Haverbeke's book Eloquent JavaScript

So far so good in the new world of coding.

-John