Inspiration
and Tragedy
It’s awards season and this year has seen
some great films. For me, Sir Alan Turing and The Imitation Game is the most
inspiring tragedies that has ever happened.
It’s time for world leaders to stand
together and support the LGBT community, just like they have for race and
colour. Then at least this is one step towards equal rights for everyone, and
labels such as ‘feminist’ should not exist because they should not have to. In a human world, people are accepted. There
is no need for further embellishment because this is the bottom line.
I sincerely hope Sir Alan Turing is recognised
for his life and for what he has done, and that we apologise to his memory for
how we treated him.
Incredible… Not only to formulate an idea,
and unlike Da Vinci, he had the vision to make it… He had the resilience to
stand firm behind his vision when everyone around him said it couldn’t be done,
and to save a society which did not accept him and persecuted him. This is
love, this is courage. He had the virtues of a human leader.
So he broke a code, I’m learning to code…
Reading
Week
Week 6 was a blessing, we were given an
opportunity to catch up and absorb everything we have experienced at Makers.
For me, I took the opportunity to learn
more javascript. I had become curious as to why this archaic language, which
was written in 10 days, is emerging as the developers language of choice. It’s
full of ‘functions’, prototypes and you dare not miss a ‘()’or ‘;’ because this
may leave you frustrated for hours trying to find out as to why your code
hasn’t worked.
Javascript is not as elegant as ruby, and
it’s rather ‘chunky’. With all the ‘()’ and ‘;’ it looks like a sort of
slithery animal traversing your screen (that’s if you have the indentation
correct), but it is functional, and I like it. With new technology such as
Node.js, you can be a javascript developer and be able to write front and back
end code… To be a full stack developer using only one language? Wow!!! This is
powerful.
Learning javascript has helped me
understand ruby, and vice versa so when I revisited Ruby, a lot of things have
just jumped out at me and I am much more confident with Ruby.
While I am on the topic about Ruby, I would
like to recommend the following books if you are considering learning to code:
- Computer
Science Programming Basics in Ruby by Frieder, Frieder and Grossman.
(Stephen passed me his personal copy as this helped him when he joined
Makers as a coach)
- Practical
Object-Oriented Design in Ruby by Sandi Metz. (Highly Recommended once you
are up and running in Ruby).
Node
Week 7 was Node.js week. Node is a huge
topic and we could spend 12 weeks learning Node and would not cover everything
for it. Node modules, (NPM’s) are being created every day and the library is
growing at a faster rate than ruby gem files.
Node is a new technology and is not as
stable as other frameworks just yet, but it’s in favour with developers at the
moment and is definitely worth investing time and knowledge into this
technology.
I am not quite there yet with Node, I have
not finished writing my Github api using node and javascript, but the one thing
I have learned since being at Makers is that I will be able to, in my own time.
What
has Week 8 got in store?
Well… It’s Valentines Day this Saturday,
but before I can set my sights on romance, I have to make an app.
I said it… I HAVE TO MAKE AN APP…
It’s MAKERTHON!!! It’s a dry run before our
final projects at Makers.
This means I only have one more week of
learning, that’s next week when we will be learning Rails.
My time at Makers is almost coming to an
end as a student, but I will be welcome back as alumni and there are many
alumni still around, helping, learning and coaching when they can. They are invaluable.
So I gotta get back to it, make the most of
my time at Makers J
