#first app

Today it is exactly one month since our course started. The time is running very fast, I can’t believe it! We did so many things on our computers that I could not imagine before... and finally we did our first web app that can be accessible for public through Heroku.

Ladies & Gentlemans: MAGIC.URL :))

https://magic-url.herokuapp.com/7667a0 ID - 16 :))

Back end: Ruby, Sinatra, ActiveRecord

Front end: Javascript, HTML & CSS, jQuery & AJAX (try to paste your URL - will automatically click on submit and add to the table without reloading the page, cool! There is also front and back end validation to accept just URL links.

Each of us did the project in a different way. I actually spent a lot of time to improve the front end even though there is still lots of work to do - the table shows just first 10 results without allowing to load the previous ones. Menu under the logo is not visible right now (but is clickable:)). Design under the table could be better.

And finally when I uploaded 500k URLs from a file into the database, the statistics & page is getting very slow as it is counting it every time you reloaded the page - need to create a new table for it to make it faster.

Otherwise I am very happy with it. I managed to learn how the back end works in Sinatra and Ruby and I am sure once we will start Rails, I could do magic things.

This is the app on Github where you can see the codes: https://github.com/Dudisek/bitly-clone

Today we started to do our second web app and that will be more challenging & advanced.

This is my first post so I figured I would introduce myself. My name is Alexander Edward Zavala. I am a current senior at San Jose State University studying Computer Engineer. With my free time I enjoy learning to code and spending time with my family, friends and my girlfriend. I also DJ and make mixes. Thats enough about me for now. You will get to learn more more me on a weekly basis. 

So yesterday I was given back one of my exams for my digital design course and I was not pleased with the grade that I received. Especially given that I had sacrificed a lot of time to study for the material. I questioned myself why am I “wasting” all this time to learn about something just to pass a class. I felt like I could have been more productive with my time doing learning other material. I then decided that I want to learn how to develop app. I do not know what app I want to create yet but I want to learn the basics skills. 

I have been following tutorials from theNewBoston. He has several videos on many different topics. The reason for using his tutorials is because I have used his tutorials to learn c++. 

For my first day of following I did all the videos up to video nine. I leaned how to create a simple design and add some interactive buttons to make the text change. 

I plan to work on some everyday so I will post what I have learned after every session. If it is not every day it will be as frequent as possible due to me having to study for 5 classes this semester. 

A few screen captures of coding development. I feel I’ve learnt a lot already- it doesn’t look very impressive, but the implications of learning the fundamentals of Android development are huge. This is the first stand-alone Android app I’ve ever produced, which in itself is a big step.