Wow, I did it, I created my first gem! This first project was an incredible experience for me. Albeit, it was a little of a rocky at times, but I was able to make to create something that I am proud of. The biggest tip for other students starting this journey is to watch the daily deal video walkthrough. Avi discusses a process of going back and forth from broken to fixed that really helped me to build each part of my gem piece by piece that made the task much easier to complete. To start my journey, I had to take the leap to move away from the comfort of the learn IDE. I know some students may have already started to work out of their terminal, but the IDE is all I knew. Programming out of my terminal was a whole new world and the concept of it was quite overwhelming. I started by downloading sublime and then built a new gem with bundler to create the skeleton of me gem. Like magic all of the basic folders for my gem appeared. Next I had to give this new folder permissions to run on my system. Thanks to the learn video, this was pretty easy to get going. My terminal was allowing me to run my gem and I was ready to start writing some code.
I’ve been a Flatiron student for a little over a month now. So far, I have enjoyed the curriculum and seem to gain a better understanding of Full Stack Web Development as each day goes by. I will try to articulate a few memorable moments of procedural Ruby below. However, the biggest challenge so far has been blog posts. Every time I login to learn.co I see that notification that a blog post is due, and I am filled with dread. I understand logically the many benefits from writing a blog post and developing this skill, but I have a really hard time completing the actual assignment. I even really enjoy other blog posts and find them incredibly useful. In fact, when OO ruby finally started to make sense to me, it was from this fun post (click here) comparing the object relationships to Pokémon relationships. So, how did finally get to the point of starting this blog post? By reading other blog posts of course! If you are struggling with the blog like me, start by reading other blogs and hopefully eventually you’ll be able to get the motivation you need to post an awesome blog of your own!
I remember the first computer I ever saw, it was an Apple IIe. My dad had brought it home from work and even though I was only 3 I still knew that it was an incredible machine. As I grew up I still remember each computer that was brought home as well as the first time we went online. As the screech of the dial-up started I knew my life and the lives of everyone around me were about to change forever. Being part of the first generation to grow up with computers, I knew they would be an integral part of my daily life. But, if someone ever asked me if I was interested in computer science I would have shrugged and said it wasn’t for me.