It’s been a little bit since I posted last (sorry about that) so this will be a bit of an update about how things are going with work and learning Ruby on Rails. I’ll start with the Ruby app I’m building. For starters, it’s been hard enough to squeeze in time to code with the full time job, so I won’t be updating on a daily basis. I’m thinking major milestones (e.g. completing an app, finishing a section on The Odin Project, etc.). Since it’s been so long though and I’m taking a night off, I thought I would update. So here goes.
This week, I’ve been working on my first Rails app starting from scratch. I’m going through the tutorial on Jumpstart Lab’s website called Blogger 2. It’s honestly a great tutorial and hand holds you through how to build everything. I am a bit weary of this style and retention of everything, but it’s all about exposure and repetition at this point. I’ve pretty much created a basic blogging website (minus a few gems and login), and you can checkout the repo here.
I have to say that the advice to learn a bit of Ruby before starting with Rails is awesome advice. I can actually understand a lot of the code that I’m writing (albeit I still don’t remember 100% of it). So, if you’re thinking about jumping into Rails prior to learning a bit of Ruby, think twice. It’ll be uber beneficial for you to go through at least a few Ruby tutorials. Not only will it be helpful for Rails, but also overall programming syntax in general if you want to pickup another language.
I’ll have to say building a blogging website isn’t the most exciting thing to do, but that doesn’t mean I’m not learning tons. Learning how to create models (tables in the database, etc.), corresponding views to view the data, and controllers to tell the application how to display data/content is extremely helpful. I have to say that this is the perfect introduction to building a Rails application compared the diving straight into Michael Hartl’s rails tutorial. I found myself stumbling through Hartl’s tutorial, whereas I know where to look and troubleshoot in the Jumpstart Labs one. Albeit, this may be due to my progress and exposure to web development in general. Either way, I recommend starting with something a little more basic (unless you pickup programming syntax like a genius lol). Anyway, that’s enough about the app. Moving on to the new job.
I’m in week 4 of the new job and it’s going pretty smoothly. I’ve got a nice little backlog of projects to work on and find myself engaged/challenged (but not overly challenged). This has been perfect for my current skill set and also to learn more about how IT infrastructure is setup. Or even how IT departments run in general. Currently, I’m still helping out our Business Analyst with some Role Mapping by pulling data from Active Directory and categorizing it. It’s extremely tedious, but I’ve also learned some PowerShell to pull things out of Active Directory and sharpened up my Excel skills (Index/Match ftw). I wish I could automate my current scope of work, but I haven’t been able to run a macro correctly (it might not even be possible). Outside of this, I built a workflow for our helpdesk to request help from the IT Infrastructure team along with a survey once the IT Infrastructure team has completed the work. This should help us gauge the Infrastructure’s team response rate, professionalism, and quality of work. Oh, by the way Google Forms is awesome for building custom surveys. I highly recommend it. I have a couple other projects in the backlog that pertain directly to project management work (building a service definition, roadmap, and cost structure) that I’ll get to at some point. But, our priorities right now lie in the Active Directory / UltiPro connectivity and ShoreTel-As-A-Service.
Overall, I’m learning tons and fortunate to have a 9-5pm job that isn’t too demanding. This gives me time to workout, eat dinner, and still get 1.5-2 hrs of coding in every night. I’m going to try to sneak in some longer days on the weekend to speed up the learning process as well. Looking forward to updating soon!