#learnruby

[plant-the-tree-blog]

Learning Goal Day #1 12/12/17

Just finished two Pomodoros of working through Chris Pine’s book “Learn to Program.” I am currently on the exercises from chapter 7 and finding them really challenging. I can write pseudocode for the general idea, but I am having a hard time producing a program that works. 

When I run through the solutions at the back of the book, I totally understand them. I’ve been typing the code up myself and writing line by line commentary, which has really helped me through understanding “while” loops. I think this method is helping a lot, but I can’t help worrying that I’m not doing a good job if I can’t generate the code myself. Maybe I will have to go back through all the exercises when I finish the book and write the code over again.

I am going to focus on the fact that I am doing the working and striving to increase my understanding. Must give up on the myth of “born genius.” Learning a skill takes small, consistent steps.

[chakazdeals-blog]

, Learn Rails, & Combine Them to http://lnk.al/4GYx

[threadandstrings]

Decoding Cryptic Solutions: App Academy’s Caesar Cipher

As I worked through the practice problems for the first time in preparing for the first code challenge of App Academy’s admissions process, I found that it was crucial to my long term learning to walk myself through their given solutions as I solved (or got painfully stuck on) each problem for two key reasons. 

For one, my solution may work, but It’s never a bad thing to know more than one way to solve a problem, right?

It’s important to check if, and understand exactly why, their logic differs from mine. 

You may realize there are some edge cases that your code misses and theirs doesn’t. You may also end up feeling pretty solid about your solution, but gain ideas for refactoring your code to be even cleaner. You may even find that the (super) humans who’ve graciously taken the time to write and provide these problems and solutions for your benefit are just like you (*gasp!), human, and just as capable of missing bugs. How reassuring is that! More on that in my next post...   

Secondly, most of their solutions are confusing as hell to read through, especially if I’m stuck and my brain is leaking out of my nostrils! 

After taking the time to break down their solutions, I’m able to quickly go back and solve the problem on my own. 

More importantly, what I learn in the short term from that process actually sticks when I come back to race the clock against the problem again the next day. You’ll never understand and be able to implement the underlying concepts by memorizing their solutions and regurgitating them into the IDE! Level up on Codewars like the glorious ninja you are after breaking down, absorbing, and applying the logic behind those solutions and see just what the fuck I mean. Just do it. 

Their solution to the Caesar Cipher problem was a hot mess to try to read through. Read on, and hopefully my refactor and line-by-line breakdown will be of use to you. 

Here’s the problem:

Write a method that takes in an integer `offset` and a string. Produce a new string, where each letter is shifted by `offset`. You may assume that the string contains only lowercase letters and spaces. When shifting "z" by three letters, wrap around to the front of the alphabet to produce the letter "c". You'll want to use String's `ord` method and Integer's `chr` method. `ord` converts a letter to an ASCII number code. `chr` converts an ASCII number code to a letter. You may look at the ASCII printable characters chart:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCII#ASCII_printable_characters Notice that the letter 'a' has code 97, 'b' has code 98, etc., up to 'z' having code 122.

You may also want to use the `%` modulo operation to handle wrapping of "z" to the front of the alphabet. Difficulty: hard. Because this problem relies on outside information, we would not give it to you on the timed challenge. :-)

Here’s their solution untouched.

(Tell me you can read through this once and understand exactly what on Earth is going on with the help of the cryptic variable names and unnecessarily long iterator names, and I’ll call you a lier, or a genius, whichever you prefer. In any case, read on...)

Here’s my refactor-breakdown-comment extravaganza:

TL;DR: 

Don’t memorize the solutions to coding problems (on Codewars, or anywhere else). Refactor them for clarity, and break them down line by line by commenting the shit out of them until your neurons are exploding with understanding. Then immediately go back and solve the problem on your own again. Then high five yourself and move on to the next problem, rinse and repeat. Re-solve the problems over and over until you literally scoff at how quickly you solve them. Then solve harder problems and repeat the same process. ¡Ándale! 

[dannyhchang-blog]

codecademy

codecademy: hey you're 49% of the way through the Ruby module

me: awesome

www.codecademy.com

[natashagreen25]

Web Development Immersive (Week 1 - Day 2 )

Today was hard and not because of the material...it is the teaching style.  I am not very happy with teaching style of one of the teachers because he is all over the place.  If I subtract that from the equation I think Web Development Immersive program out of New York is really cool.  My cohort are really interesting and they each have their own benefits.  The GA staff is awesome and very accommodating. Open to help us at will and  they provide coffee. :-)

A cultural of learning was established the first day and the idea of being a unit is very powerful.  I am very frustrated over the teaching style and the only reason I am not S.O.L is because I did the prework so I know some of the material so it is still a refresher.  My concern is what happens when we are out of prework mode? I was thinking of asking to switch classes but I think they setup the classes in a certain way. I am not a quitter and I already know my cohort but is being a frustrated learner a good learner? I have to see how it goes. I talk to one of the teachers and they were receptive. 

The only thing I have to suggest coming from a teacher background is to write down little notes about what you are going to speak about.  If you want to explain git in relationship to github you should be able to do that with your eyes close. Trying to teach the pahtways for git and github and scribbling away words because of defining it wrong will mess up anybodies logical flow in their mind.  On the other hand, diagramming is a powerful tool - when done right. 

The frustration I feel reminds me of when I was going for my Bachelors in Chemistry. The only reason I stayed in my Bachelors' program is because of my professor Tania Peres. She told me to stay with it...so I did. There is another teacher there and she was like don't worry about it things will get better. It isn't like it is bad but you know, for a lot of us this is a turning point and our lives and we want to leave doing and knowing our best. 

The topics covered yesterday were:

git and github

setting up bashprofile

setting up sublime

rudimentary operators

while loop

if - else statements

Variable assignment - supposedly if this is one thing you don't get you are screwed for the rest of your Ruby career.

We didn't go into methods or anything but we had a homework that wants us to use build a calculator and I just decided to do it the way of method creation.  Obviously, there is going to be more than one way to do it so we will see what other people post. 

[ankita1-blog-blog]

Fibonacci Series

Write a program to help unravel insights into numbers, addition and the golden ratio of nature!

[rubyonrailsinnovators-blog]

Yesterday we had the awesome pleasure to interview a current professional in the Ruby on Rails Industry. As our first interview in the Ruby on Rails Innovators community we spoke with the talented Peter Dudek. Peter is a RoR professional who has recently (1 year) learned RoR and has turned his enjoyment of the learning process and the RoR online communities into his current profession. Peter also has plans to be one of the many contributors to the world of RoR. He has also created a blog rubyrailroad.com, documenting "A web developer's programming adventures in Ruby on Rails". Peter talks with us about how he got his start with the Ruby language and his road map from learning Ruby, to landing a new career and deciding to master the language for his own endeavors.

Peter gives us a great insight into how he has transitioned into his new career path with Ruby on Rails. The interview is informational for anyone in the software/web development industry who may have an interest or questions about Ruby on Rails and have thought about maybe becoming a RoR professional. 

@RoRinnovators is dedicated to creating an authentic and resourceful community of talent in the Ruby on Rails industry. This interview is the first of many we hope to bring to the already vast community of Ruby on Rails users, fans, and professionals. Enjoy.

Check out Peter's Twitter and Blog:

@dudekpj

www.rubyrailroad.com

[plant-the-tree-blog]

Coding Goal #1 12/12/17 - 12/22/18

Spend 2x Pomodoros working on coding exercises from “Learn to Program,” “Learn Ruby the Hard Way,” “Codecademy,” “Team Treehouse,” or other resources.

[ankita1-blog-blog]

In this simple project, you'll try to illuminate a mock-up of a 7 segment LCD, all done with Javascript. In a text box, we would like the user to enter a number or many numbers, and we would like to display that as a 7 segment LCD.