For the last year and few months, I have been learning a new field – really learning – not just playing like I had for the previous many years. I had dabbled in web development, even having my own (terrible and never updated) website. I only ever seemed to know how to get myself in trouble, but not how to get myself out. Now, I’m trying to learn as many different ways to get myself in trouble — and then get myself out!
In the last year and change I have learned C, HTML, CSS, php, MySQL, JavaScript, jQuery and now I am learning Ruby.
How did I get to Ruby?
Almost two months ago I applied for an apprenticeship at 8th Light, a company in Chicago. I managed to progress to an interview with Mike, after submitting several iterations of a TicTacToe program in JavaScript.
Unfortunately, I was not in a place in my coding journey to be offered a position at this time.
BUT(!) Mike is kind enough to have offered to personally mentor me, which I have accepted. Mike suggested that one of my next steps would be to learn straight up Ruby (not Ruby on Rails, just yet).
Over the last week I have been working my way through the Ruby Koans to help learn Ruby through test driven development. Two birds with one stone, as it were!
The format of the koans was a little difficult for me to pick up at first, but once I got the hang of that, I really started to enjoy them. One of my favorite parts of the koans are the little bits of advice just above your progress bar. The best one is “sleep is the best meditation.” I got stuck towards the beginning of the koans, it was late, and that was the mantra above my progress bar. So, I went to sleep, woke up the next morning, and it just clicked. Since then, I’ve been going through the koans and understanding most of what I do, if not, I have Google, StackOverflow and Mike.
I look forward to sharing my coding adventures here, and I am glad to have you along for the ride!