W3D5 - Tower of Flare
Solo day today! Our project was to build ActiveRecord Lite.
I woke up with a bad headache, and had to take some medicine as a result before heading out. Two days ago, a really really late N/R train resulted in me making it to App Academy at 8:57 AM - just 3 minutes to spare. So now I try to leave earlier than usual.
I sat where I sat on W3D2. My partner was the same person from yesterday! So although we were solo, it meant we could still ask each other for help as we went along.
The day started off with lots of solutions. Unfortunately, I couldn't get the assessment to run on the computer because of what seems to be big version differences (that fixing the Gemfile didn't mend) and it was late so I ended up being unable to take it.
After a long lecture of solutions and going over metaprogramming concepts (which involved method_missing, define_method, and send), we were sent off to start on our first solo day.
I was excited! I would be working along, and we also had Rspecs to go along with it. Plus, it wasn't like I was totally alone. I had a partner I was familiar with I could ask questions, and also the TA's. It was pleasing.
Of course, it got off to a bit of a rough start. The custom attr_reader attr_writer methods which were simply put together as attr_accessor was rather confusing at first. But once we deciphered it was simply calling a method the same way we usually do, just with more interpolation and reflection. I only got to the second set of specs, which were quite long, but as I worked through them, I started to better understand how ActiveRecord works. Different methods had to be custom defined and some had to include SQL queries, including columns, finalize!, table_name, all, parse_all, and attribute. I approached each of these by sticking debugger into it and trying to figure out what works. I thought maybe this was cheating, but Leen later said that was actually a really good thing to do, especially since it can help you figure out what you really have in there.
At first, my partner was getting ahead on his ARL. Then I started pushing ahead. Then he got the lead on me again. Even though we weren't 'pairing', we still helped each other out, and definitely without one another, I think both of us would've found that we were stuck in places much longer.
The day seemed to go by quite quickly, and towards the end of the day, Leen pulled me in to the office to check up on me. I talked to her about some of my insecurities, things I wasn't clear on, and she also gave me some pointers about the upcoming assessment and some common problems that were encountered during SQL and assocations. I'm glad I decided to start checking in, it definitely has helped me find a much better direction in my App Academy quest.
After, we pushed to Github and had to start the Friday circle time. We would get to finish up ActiveRecord Lite and do Rails Lite later on, so that meant two more solo days were coming at the very least.
The group was pretty standard. I also shared two stories related to my previous internship, including one about an applicant who showed high technical proficiency, but was bumbling enough to post their Facebook on their resume.
At the end of the day, we were told that unfortunately, App Academy would not be open during this weekend. That puts quite a damper on my pair programming plan - it means we'll have to change plans and still try to make it work somehow.
Finally, for the first time in three weeks, I went to the gym. Turns out after that long, doing warmup squats of 95 lbs have become difficult, where before I could easily do it without a sweat. Ouch. I need to force myself to go at least once a week, or else I'm in big trouble.
Good night.
