Coding Singh

This week we have had a more practical week than a theoretical based one. Usually I wouldn't complain, but I felt I wanted to read up on things, have a reference, instead I felt a little insecure, akin to a man in the sea with no rubber dingy. Furthermore, the support from Evgeny & co does feel a little more like a lifeline, a last resort, than the first port of call. But then, isn't that what this process is all about? Trying to make things, things that work, and if they don't, find out why they don't, if you can't, think of where you can find the answer, if you're really stuck, then just ask. Having written it down in ink (pixels really), it makes sense, I kind of like this maverick-like learning. This week has been the introduction to OOP (Object-Oriented Programming). "Shouldn't you already understand that?!" I hear you cry! Indeed, Objective-C is an object-oriented language, however, the key thing to remember is, I didn't understand what I was doing when programming! My code smelt so bad that I think that even a fly would refuse to go near it! OOP is quite a difficult concept to understand but it did help when we used CRC cards and then testing within rspec using Doubles. I think I still need to get my head fully around Doubles but hopefully today I can be a Double-Master! Other than OOP, GitHub's Brnt Beer came down to makers for a 3-hour session on using Git, gave us some great stickers (which now live on my laptop) and invited us to the Atom beta (to which I have now switched to, but needs a LOT of work). After the workshop, I felt a lot more confident using the reset commands (hard, mixed & soft) The project this week was called Boris Bikes, a project based on London's bike renting system. It was challenging, especially when we moved away from the tutorial to the challenges, but I kept my head down (as usual!) and persevered to success. Although whilst concentrating I may seem antisocial, headphones in my ears, furiously typing, writing notes and stroking my beard, I assure you I am not! I promise! Well this has been my week, although on the weekend my wife decorated our study which I really approve of! Check out my last post to see what it looks like!

How quickly a group of programmers revert to talking about childhood heroes! #makersacademy (at Makers Academy)

Too true!

My new study thanks to my darling wife @jas_kbajwa !

So, it's Friday, Test Day, did I get a sticker? I hear you ask! Well no, and no it's not because I didn't pass my test, we should be getting them on Monday after our tests are checked. I quite enjoyed the test as it proved to myself that it all sunk in, I understand Git quite well and feel confident using it, which is great!

Week 2. And I'm taking liquids with me! Those of you who haven't worked at an airport won't appreciate the love we have for our liquids. Paying extortionate prices for the tiniest bottles, not to mention the inability to take yogurt! And don't let me get started on the security searches... I know that I have metal on me. You know I have metal on me. They're always in the same places. Just check they're still there and done. But nope. Every single time! Oh well! Not anymore! I can relax, have soup with a can of coke, search free! Ah simple things... Today is Wednesday, and we've been strengthening our Ruby skills whilst learning TDD/BDD from @ecomba. It's pretty clever stuff and at times difficult to ensure you don't look too far in the future and stick to the failing test at the time. But the more I used the technique (using rspec for Ruby) the more intuitive it became. Oh yes, before I forget! There is a course on rspec on code school (link at bottom) with a brilliant rap to go with it! I feel that over this week (so far!) we've been strengthening our foundation and I'm glad. At least when we go on to tackling bigger and meaner things we'll have the tools to at least try and find a solution. Talking of bigger things, yesterday we were set the Roman numeral code kata, I'm stuck in the proverbial mud. I just hope that sleep will help otherwise Evgeny will have a students name on the board (the way we ask for help - it's really quite good, I'll explain it in another post). That's all for now folks! Rspec Course http://rspec.codeschool.com

The sign I'm becoming a true geek! @makersacademy

So it's the end of week 1... We've all hit the ground running, with Command line, Git & Ruby and although we've written relatively simple code, I feel that I have accomplished something. Never working with either of these before, except Github to look at various code examples, I feel fairly confident how to do the basics in all these and for week 1 I think that is something to cherish. Cherish because I believe that the next 11 weeks I may not be so lucky to have the same feeling, but I am definitely looking forward to it. Makers Academy in general is pretty awesome, the talks they organise (We just had Sam who teaches and pairs on some Agile Ventures projects), the classes and then the get on with it attitude. You are not spoon-fed instead at Makers teachers are more like a mother who comes and wipes up any mess you've made when you cry. On our first day we were told not to compare ourselves to anyone but ourselves yesterday, however, I believe is this unrealistic as we work in such close proximity to others and especially when we pair program. Today, we had our first test and after few hiccups with the test of the test I realised I had made one mistake. Which ain't too shabby! I looked through some of the material for next week, still on Ruby I was pointed towards an interesting post on the difference between and/or and &&/|| but it's definitely worth a look. Week 1 over and all in all I've enjoyed my first week at Makers, it's been productive, taxing and above all interesting. Bring on Monday! Post http://devblog.avdi.org/2010/08/02/using-and-and-or-in-ruby/

I had hoped that I wouldn't have to write one of these, but alas the engineering works of our nations railway is a continuos juggernaut that is the bane of many commuters' existence. But I digress, yes my train is delayed so I hope I still make it to Makers at a decent time! At the time of writing it's currently 21 minutes late, but oh well. So Makers Academy... We've done a bit of Terminal and Git and moved onto Ruby yesterday. It's an interesting language, having coded in Objective-C before, I have a little devil on my shoulder telling to describe my variable (NSString, NSNumber...) or but parenthesis where they are not needed or even using iOS-style methods such as [-objectAtIndex] for an NSArray, but I guess that's the risk you run when you are learning a new code base and I enjoy it. I've really found Git useful and am gutted that I've never used it before. I'm looking forward to my day working on the student-directory repo using Ruby and Git and tomorrow will be my last day of my first week and I'm actually surprised how much I've retained. Long may it continue! Well my train is here now so I believe that this is a good time to end my post!

Right, I am really going to leave it there, as I’m eating into my 2 hour kip-time. Night! I mean Morning?

Call me obsessed. (Taken with Instagram at Home)

Mamiji & Bhanji (Taken with Instagram)

Enter Caption Here... (Taken with Instagram at Home)

Mum and dad know how to have fun! ;p (Taken with Instagram at Home)