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WDI Day Fifteen: Intro to Ruby

Wow, right when you’re beginning to feel comfortable with one language, your world gets flipped upside-down. Today we started working with Ruby, and although I took General Assembly’s back-end web development class a few months ago, I realize I never really quite absorbed the information.

We reviewed how Ruby is different than JavaScript, how the syntax is a bit different as well as the way to debug the language (i.e. using puts instead of console.log) and gathering user input (i.e. gets).

In the afternoon we reviewed Ruby enumerables, also known as methods to search, sort, and manipulate collections. We learned that Ruby deals with arrays as well as hashes (which are like JavaScript objects) and went over the various ways of looping that include:

  • for … in
  • while
  • until
  • loop do
  • .times

Afterwards, the class jumped on the homework assignments, and it was definitely a struggle. For the first time, it looks like I won’t be able to complete mine. However, I’m refusing to give up just yet. Hopefully I can make sense of this soon…

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WDI Day Fourteen: Project Refactor

Today we worked on refactoring the code for our first project, or in other words, cleaning up the code. I found myself feeling a bit exhausted from working on the Flash Cards project, so I delved into my Hangman project a little bit and made quite a bit of progress. You can see my Hangman project here.

The biggest takeaway from our first project week is that it’s important to find something to work on that you can be passionate and excited about. Otherwise, it’s all too easy not to feel too dedicated about what you’re working on, which is something you never want to have happen.

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WDI Day Thirteen: Project Presentations & Object-Oriented Programming

In the morning we presented our projects in a science-fair style, where several of us had our laptops set up on boxes. I realized I was way more excited to talk to people about the logic behind my incomplete Hangman project than I was about the logic behind my Flash Cards. It just goes to show that it’s better to work on something that you can get excited about because you’ll work even more at getting it right.

After projects, it was a day focussed on object-oriented programming with constructor functions and prototypes. I’m realizing I’m understanding the concepts a lot better now, but certain concepts are still a bit of a struggle, like when to use return statements.

Nevertheless, I’m excited to see how things pan out with this program. Next week we start working with the back-end, so that shall be interesting.

hangman

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WDI Day Twelve: Project Week 1, Part 3

This week has been utterly exhausting! I started the day off tackling Hangman and was pretty proud of the progress I made. I was pretty ambitious and wanted to finish everything today, however, that’s somewhat ridiculous since I already completed one of the other projects for project one. Nevertheless, I did manage to get most the of logic coded. The main problem I ran into was figuring out how to get the masked word to show up, letter by letter, based on what the user guessed.

I’m excited to figure out drawing the frames of the Hangman as well, and figuring out the logic for how many guesses the user has until it’s a game over. Although I wasn’t able to complete the project today, I’m hoping to make some progress either tomorrow night or Friday. Interestingly enough, even though the day was filled with a lot of frustration, I was pretty proud of the small wins I achieved on my own, even when they were when I figured out what was wrong in the code and didn’t necessarily have an answer just yet.

Tomorrow we’re presenting our projects, so I plan to present my flash card application, and plan to also show off the canvas drawing element that I just got started with for Hangman.

This afternoon was a lot of fun since we met with the Outcomes team and had a career coach run a workshop with us where we did a couple of exercises to help us write our brand statement for who we are all about when it comes to being an employee. We broke off into groups where one of us pretended to be the interviewer, the other was the interviewee, and the third was the scribe who wrote down any words and phrases that described the qualities of the interviewee based on his/her responses to the interviewer. It was a fun exercise and I really enjoyed hearing more about my classmates’ stories.

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WDI Day Eleven: Project Week 1, Part 2

This morning consisted of several hours of pure frustration, as I couldn’t figure out one particular issue. In the future, I really need to learn how to let some issues go and revisit them later, since today I ended up realizing the problem I wanted to solve, wasn’t a problem at all. In fact what I initially set out to do, didn’t make much sense!

I wanted to work on event listeners for keypresses, so users could move to the front and back of cards with the enter and right-hand arrow key. Then I realized that the enter key was sufficient enough for when users are adding input, but that the right arrow key wasn’t intuitive enough. Instead, I made the entire cards clickable, so users could navigate that way.

I also learned how important it is to really plan out the logic behind your applications before you start coding. If I had thought through more of the main functionalities I wanted, I may not have run into as many issues as I did, where I had to readjust my code along the way. However, I suppose you can’t always plan out everything. Sometimes your coding will unfold organically.

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WDI Day Ten: Project Week 1, Part 1

Today was the first day of our project week. This week, we’re all expected to get to GA bright and early and work away all day long on our first major project. Our task is to complete a familiar game with HTML and JS. We had the following games to choose from:

  • Tower of Hanoi
  • Trivia
  • Flash Cards
  • Simon
  • Hangman

I decided to go with flash cards, simply because creating a game on its own will be a challenge enough. I’m still struggling to figure out the logic when I start projects, and I’m hoping that will change over time.

Over the weekend I managed to complete most of the project’s functionality, so for the most part I worked on compiling the content for the cards, finding images for the front and back of the cards, and working out some of the styling issues. I kept running into issues with event listeners, since my game involves users guessing the answer to a card in an input, then clicking to view the back of the card, then clicking once more to see the next card. The game includes scoring, a timer, and the option to play again when the game is over.

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WDI Day Nine: Scopes, Closures, & User Stories

We reviewed JavaScript scope, context, and closures. It was helpful running through a couple of scope exercises, to ensure we knew when variables were being read locally or globally in different functions. Context involved going over “this,” and what “this” is referring to. I felt like I was able to grasp most of the concepts, although one of our in-class exercises proved to be pretty difficult for me. I feel like whenever something involves math, it takes me a little while to figure out how to get it working properly. Hopefully that will improve with time.

In the afternoon we went over problem solving and user stories in group. We were also told what the requirements will be for our first project which will need to be completed by Thursday of next week. I’ve decided to tackle making a JavaScript flash card game. My goal is actually to finish it early so I can tackle another game like hang man. I’m probably being a little overly ambitious, but we shall see what I can do…

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WDI Day Eight: ATM Lab

I’m definitely out of my comfort zone now when it comes to WDI, which is great – let the learning commence!

Today was another lab day, and it was definitely a struggle. Our assignment was to create an ATM where users could deposit and withdraw funds in a checking and savings account. If the account value was zero, a CSS class needed to be assigned to the ATM that highlighted the balance in red.

At the end of the day, I managed to complete the lab along with the bonus assignments. My biggest issue was being able to make the code cleaner. I was able to get the functionality down right, it was just a matter of writing shorter code. I guess that’s something for me to aspire to?

Overall, I’m pretty proud that I was able to get something to work. Makes you feel like a bit of a magician when your javaScript is functional.

Takeaways:

  • Console.log is really useful in figuring out how the browser is reading variables
  • Figuring out when a user is clicking a button within a specific div
  • Pseudo coding well in the beginning can really help you out later
  • Struggling with an exercise until you figure it out can help solidify some of the overall javaScript concepts
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WDI Day Seven: DOM, Debugging, and another Panel

Today proved to be a lot more challenging since it involved more hands-on work. The day started off with a DOM exercise, followed by more javaScript review that included reviewing key events, timing functions, and different error messages.

The big takeaway was, when in doubt, console.log it! Or Google it…

In the afternoon we met with the Outcomes team who had a panel of GA graduates talk to us about their experience in the program. It sounds like there is definitely a struggle in the program – a lot of frustration when you’re beginning to learn complex problems – but ultimately, if you keep at it, things will click and make sense to you.

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WDI Day Six: DOM, Events, and Callbacks

I haven’t felt like I’ve been the strongest when it comes to JavaScript, so I was really excited to dive into more code today. We reviewed a few concepts I was familiar with, like working with the DOM (or Document Object Model), events, and callback functions.

Although the lecture didn’t consist of too much new information for me, the hands-on assignments were what really helped. Having to struggle to figure out how to create different functionalities proved to be really useful. One task I tackled included creating a JavaScript stop watch. Sometimes the struggle of getting something to work can be a real headache, but at the same time, once it’s actually functioning properly, it can give you a real sense of relief and accomplishment.

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