Monday, 9 February 2015

the_simulation_game || theTheoryOfEverythingMakers

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:

  1. 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)
  2. 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

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