Hi everyone...
I hope your first week back at work/school was not to
bad. It's always tough this week, so I am gradually easing myself back into the
routine starting with only one gym session... I might try 2 next week ;-)
First week back at Makers and it has flown by. We had
been developing the front end for our back end battleships programme this week.
The front end is the user interface and this is what you would see if you play
my battleships game. This was fun, creating web pages and seeing the visualisations
that I had created, be them very basic...
So what have we been learning this week?
This week has been about the web. I thought we were going to learn
about Sinatra, which is a Ruby web application framework. Once we started
delving into Sinatra, it became apparent that we would be also be using
Cucumber and Capybara. I had set myself to focus on one technology, only to be
ambushed by two more.
This is Makers and this is what they do! (This is
a good thing!)
Cucumber is
a software tool that is used for testing other software. It runs
automated acceptance tests written
in a behaviour-driven development (BDD) style.
Capybara helps you test web
applications by simulating how a real user would interact with your app.
Fortunately for me, I had dropped all the stress and anxiety I had
over the holidays, just before the course re-started, otherwise I may have been
in a bit of a pickle... This took a lot of work, and conversations with my
fiancée and an incredibly special lady, Sian Morgan, who could be described as
a psychologist, life coach, author, advisor and many more. I describe her
as “someone you just have to talk to”.
My fiancée is in the process of launching her business, The Human
Leaders, in which she is seeking to inspire a change of working culture to
create sustainable business and promote the values she has highlighted on The
Human Leaders manifesto.
Please check out the Facebook page
https://www.facebook.com/thehumanleaders
Together, they helped me understand the difference between
“knowing” and “believing”. By believing, I let go of the stress and the
negative thoughts that I was not learning, and instead, I just cracked on with
it… I was able to find my flow-state… On Friday afternoon, I sat down at my
desk at 1330hrs, put on some focus music and started the HTML & CSS course
on Codeacademy while working on my weekend challenge simultaneously. I got up
again at 2000hrs to go home.
I would not advise this, but sometimes, it happens, and you just
gotta roll with it.
What a difference 24hrs can make!
Thursday was a bad day for me. I was knocked off my stride because
I found myself working alone, working on the Battleships web app using
technology that I had never used before. My pairing partner had decided to
create his own version, staying up until 5am, and therefore he was in no state
to pair program.
The previous two days were brilliant. Our collaboration creating
our joint app was going really well and we had made great progress. Our
conversations for our app design were extremely useful and are important in all
app design.
I found the transition from pair programming, to working on my own
with no one to bounce ideas back and forth very difficult, and not something I
would recommend to any novice programmers.
The week had highlighted the incredible value and power of
conversation and collaboration, and why Makers is so keen to promote Pair
Programming.
What is a weekend?
I must confess… I am a Downton Abbey fan. Last night I watched
episode 2 from the first series, and there was a line from the Dowager Countess
of Grantham in which she asks the dinner table “What is a week-end?” I was in
stitches, but I can relate to her question during my time at Makers.
I have created a “to-do” list that includes Ruby refresher, some
pre-reading for next week and the weekend challenge - to create a Rock paper
Scissors game for the web.
This is a rolling “to-do” list… Seems like I’ll be carrying this
list with me for many years to come, I am, however, ready for next week…
Something to do with databases… I genuinely can’t wait…
I’ll keep you posted J
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