The best compliment this year

I received the best compliment of the year very recently from one of the awesome TAs @ACLTC. While assisting me with my feeble attempt to implement an Angular directive in my code he pointed out the reason I wasn’t getting it was because I was thinking in Ruby but needed to code in Angular.

WHAT?!?

I’m thinking in Ruby? When did this happen? I think in RUBY?!?! THANK YOU SIR! I consider this the highest compliment I have received for the entire year. Much appreciated @kunalbhat !!!

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To me… the was blog worthy!

June 1, 2015

Stupid “J”!!!!

Sundays at ACLTC are the most intense days we have since we are able to go for 8 hours learning and coding. It is a long day but it also is the most amazing environment and experience. Yesterday we actually took pictures… not my favorite thing in the world but alas it can’t all be fun and games, right?

As has become a habit with me I talk to myself out loud when coding… or basically when concentrating. It’s a low mumble hopefully that does not annoy others; however, there is one thing I tend to shout – “Stupid J!!” It should be noted at this point that our instructor is named Jay and is a very nice guy whom I would never yell such words to despite some of the challenging exercises he dishes out with maniacal pleasure – really you should see the little glint he gets in his eyes! The reason for my Tourette’s like outbursts is because my MacBook Air has a few letters that like to pop off every now and again but that “J” never cooperates!This can be annoying at times but this is my first Mac… the first Mac I invested in bought last summer off of Craigslist after attempting to code using a PC. That was a real challenge especially since every place I went with more experienced developers consisted on Mac users only. I had always wanted a Mac (after all use iPhones and iPads exclusively) but they are quite expensive. Yes my little MacBook Air is a bit older… and smaller… than that of most developers BUT it is a hardworking machine and honestly is the most I can afford. After all, I’ve not gotten a developer’s salary quite yet. I do plan to upgrade eventually but this one has travelled from meet-up to meet-up with me, allowed me to begin coding and just makes me proud. It runs a bit slower than desired and has its quirks… as my instructor found out yesterday but it’s mine all mine and 100% paid for. I also think my perspective is a bit different than some… in that of all the obstacles that I have to overcome and things to worry about on my path to becoming a developer this is so very insignificant. This is just life as an urban geekmom in my experience. I am thankful to have this Mac and until I can afford better it will have to suffice.

Plus, I love my little Mac…. it’s making me a developer and that is priceless.

May 27, 2015May 27, 2015

Rails… Oh I got this!

Dear Creator of Rails –

Thank you! Last night I successfully installed and used Rails for the first time and I must say after using MAMP, MY SQL, and WordPress…. this was a breeze! It is very intuitive and has handy shortcuts… who doesn’t love shortcuts to quickly getting a site locally hosted and ready for coding. It is very exciting to watch all these pieces come together.

Next up, JS (JavaScript) which I have not touched in almost 2 years!! It’s so sad how fast time goes – in this industry if you are not coding everyday (with the exclusion of the Sabbath of course) you miss out on so much. Well NO MORE! I am in it! I am loving it and it will take a pack of wild beasts to pull me from it (coding in general).

Yes, only these wild wolves can stop me from coding… and only for a time.

While I may not be sure I am going to be a master full stack developer I am really gaining confidence that I am going to be a baby ninja at front end development.

See I am a total mom… couldn’t resist having a baby picture!

While I stated previously that front end development almost seems like a stereotypical role for a female in the tech industry, it still provides more coding time and skills that make me more independent. I can keep plugging away at the different programming languages while using those skills. I don’t mind being a baby ninja a front end developing and a junior back end developer. I could live with that. If that’s a compromise I even have to make. At this point I don’t think I do!

Well, I better get to being productive now… again, thank you Rails creators… there are some weird syntax issues we could discuss but I’ll save that for another blog… but really the ‘#’ to separate page controllers and the action?? Really?!?!