#sqlzoo

We got off at 4pm today!! After many days of limping along feeling sleep-deprived and not having enough time to review prior material in addition to the evening’s assignments, I am really looking forward to a couple of extra hours in the day!

I'm officially bilingual.

If I count my Python experience before a/A, I'm already a polyglot. On the other hand, considering that I can now do more with Ruby after two weeks than I ever did with Python, the standards have been raised. (Although I'm sure I could quickly improve my Python on the back of Ruby should the need arise.)

Today's new language, however, was SQL. Static typing, mysterious "databases," unfamiliar syntax. Weird disagreements on pronunciation. (It's pronounced "sequel" at a/A, with the caveat: "When you get hired by a company, get them to say 'SQL' first, so you can follow their convention. Or risk being mocked to forever and back.")

We spent the day working through SQL Zoo, a series of increasingly complicated database queries. The first half was straighforward (I daresay some of it was trivial!), but it got challenging pretty quickly afterwards, and by day's end we were walking around in circles trying to fit two self-joins with two other self-joins to select all bus routes, and the companies that serviced them, that could take us anywhere that was two buses from "Craiglockhart." Or was it "Sighthill"?

An Uber ride would have saved us a lot of trouble.

Earlier in the day, we saw our last of pure Ruby in Assessment 02. It's incredible to think that we're now capable of building a functioning card game (except for the display, a separate problem) within an hour. With a working, reasonably intelligent AI player, no less.

I also finally encountered a pair-programming challenge today, though it was minor. For the first time, it felt like my partner was picking up the day's material significantly quicker than I was. I've been pretty well matched so far, but today, at times, it was difficult to keep up. I've learned it's best to stop my partner and say, "I have no idea what this does or why this works. Can you explain it to me?"

4 Hours of sleep and then waking up to SQL. Just... Great....

You start off learning about SQL thinking, hey! This is easy!

SELECT? Easy! Gives you back the column! What I want, I get!

FROM? Piece of cake! It's just the table you're searching in!

WHERE? PLEASE! Knowing conditional statements is like knowing how to breathe!

ORDER BY? I know how to count up and down!

GROUP BY!.... Wait what? Why are my columns... How?

JOIN + ON... Hold up. I'm not sure what's going on anymore.

Now combine all of it with sub queries.... WHAT?!

*5 hours into SQL Zoo exercises*

.... I don't know jack about SQL.

*removes "Experienced with SQL" from resume*

They say once we get to Rails, SQL will be abstracted away and we'll fall in love with how easy it gets. I don't know how I feel about that. On one hand it's great to know that we won't have to spend a lot of time trying to reach a successful query (each one feels like I'm in some Math League competition), but, it seems like an important "under the hood" process.

Getting a successful query to pass is all I want for Christmas. Seeing that Smiley face when you input a correct answer; there's nothing like it after you slave over one exercise for 20 minutes.

Man....

Querying....

We went through the sql zoo (misnomer much?) today.

Well, this was one of my stronger days at app academy so far. SQL is the only language I have had any work experience with, so I had an initial leg up. 

Our project for the day was to write queries for multiple data points; i.e. finding nobel prize winners, selecting movie casts for Julie Andrews movies, filtering and searching through Scotland bus routes. If I hear Craiglockhart one more time, I might go into a mini coma.

All in all a quick day after our morning assessment, especially after my ruby development environment decided to crash and revert to the system ruby. 

RVM still existed on my mac, but no matter what i did it still pointed everything to my system ruby.

I think it had to do with updating my bash_prompt, I must have deleted an RVM path by mistake. 

What an overall great day! We started today with our second assessment where we had to build the game crazy eights (like UNO with a regular playing deck). They told us ahead of time what this assessment would entail, so I took it upon myself to prepare very well over the weekend. When Monday morning came around, I was ready! Although some minor things tripped me up in the beginning, I was able to quickly spot the issue and know exactly what to do to correct it. I finished with about 15 minutes to spare and even had enough time to refactor all of my code.

Not many felt the same way. Last week, Ned and the TA's congratulated us for our high scores. The mood was distinctively gloomier today. The average was 41/45, with a passing score of 40. Many people who felt confident about their OOD skills didn't focus on the assessment over the weekend, and ran out of time before they could pass all their RSpecs. I'm definitely learning this lesson from others. You never know something well enough.

Right after the assessment, we went straight to our SQL tutorials. No post-assessment review this week. My partner and I were delayed for quite a while due to spotty wifi. After CJ worked his Army-wifi magic on it for over an hour, we were finally on the way.

The day before I had spent most of the day cramming as much SQL knowledge as I could. I had never used SQL before, so needless to say, the idea of tackling a whole new language with a coding partner on just one-day's worth of SQL seemed quite daunting at the time.

However, SQL came to me quite easily! The filtering makes sense, and there's not that much syntax to learn. The searches can get quite nested and messy, especially if there are any JOINs , but so far the most annoying thing to keep track of is the constant caps-locking and unlocking. My pinky finger is getting quite a work out.