Another Week!

I'm reaching the end of week eight of our coding bootcamp (7 more weeks until I'm really on the hook for finding a job)!

If you'd like to read up on Week 9, click here.

This week ended early because of Thanksgiving, and we did not have class on Thursday or Friday. We DID, however, have our code challenge, which I passed, yay!

Our coding challenge had us writing Javascript to implement some EventListening on buttons and make some get/post requests to a back-end server (which was provided). I've been studying pretty hard, so I felt pretty comfortable going through it. My only feedback from my instructors was that I actually over-commented my code!

What I've Learned Up Until Now

Just as a recap of my current competencies:

1) I learned programming basics through Ruby, such as variables, objects, methods, functions, classes and more. (Ruby)
2) We learned how to create programs that persisted data to databases using SQLite3. (Ruby, SQLite3)
3) I began turning my programs into static web applications that communicated to the web through a framework called Ruby on Rails that worked on top of an underlying framework called Rack. (Ruby, Rails, SQLite3, HTML)
4) We moved into dynamic web development by learning Javascript fundamentals and how Javascript helps us create a dynamic "front end" to our web applications. (Javascript).

So, right now, in my tool belt I have an understanding of:

• Interacting with a database through Ruby to persist data
• Using Ruby on Rails to handle HTML requests to interact with a web server
• Creating dynamic pages through Javascript/CSS/HTML

Tying It All Together

Flatiron's curriculum is meant to turn its students into full stack developers. At this point we now have the tools to make a full stack web application.

Web applications have a front-end (what the user interacts with through a client) and a back-end (data-handling by the server).

We will be using Ruby on Rails as our back-end and Javascript/CSS/HTML as our front-end.

Cool Things I Learned

Javascript has been around for a while, and designing pages with it is really fun! I never realized how many Javascript frameworks are out there if you want to do...well, anything. One of my favorite ones so far is Phaser3: a javascript game engine! When I have a spare weekend or two I'd love to play around with it!

I also learned love coming up with models and abstractions (back-end stuff), but I also didn't realize how much I love trying to make web pages look inviting and interesting. There are so many helpful tools out there like Semantic UI, PixelJS, and p5 that I can't wait to dive into.

Side Note: I talked with a UX/UI people at a local coffee shop near my house. She was telling me of the importance of not only designing your website, but planning before your design. This is mostly what UX/UI people do, but I would love to learn more about their work, just to gain more perspective on that (it might really help with our projects). I got to see her website, which made me realize that I should make my own portfolio website! Her name is Tomomi Matsuzaki and I thought it might be cool to put her portfolio website here!

What's next?

Week 9 is Project Week, and although my home is being remodeled, I've been brainstorming non-stop on creative, challenging ideas that might stretch my devskills. I'll be sure to dive into my project next week!

Stay tuned!

Good luck with your own endeavors!
Shawn