I am a Ruby developer, so yay to that! That also means that we have now moved on to a different language. Javascript, here I come! When I describe coding and its different languages to people I describe coding as one big language that has many different dialects such as Ruby or Javascript. In my humble opinion it all seems sort of the same but changes in the way same things are constructed. Suddenly methods are functions, the initialize method turns into a constructor function, there is a lot more parenthesis and no ends. Getting through the ‘new’ Javascript intro was somewhat difficult for me. As I was reading along, I realized quickly that it is all similar and lost interest almost right away. The biggest challenge for me was definitely getting through the initial lessons and labs in the last two weeks. Procrastination and distraction was never an issue for me but I struggled with that immensely the past weeks. But! I have overcome that hurdle and now we are onto Javascript that is a little more in depth and not the same as Ruby. So here we are, onto a newish chapter, almost 4 months into the program. It is crazy how fast everything went by. This whole program so far has definitely taught me, that no matter what you bring at me, I am up for a challenge and I always fight my way through it!
For this month’s project I decided to create an application where you can find reviews for video games and when signed in can write your own reviews as well. If a game does not exist yet, a user can create that as well. While building this app, I realized that I have the biggest issue with trying to figure out code that I have not written. For the signup, login, logout, etc. process I decided to use a gem called devise. Though now it is working just fine, I was struggling with figuring its details out. I had issues with the initial setup and having custom params. The omniauth also had its hurdles. After extensive research and lots of trial and error, I figured it out eventually. Levels of frustration were definitely very high. When I write my own code, I know where everything is and why it has been written. With a gem like this there is just so many files, all structured differently than I am used to. It takes some getting used to. I will try to implement new gems as much as possible in the future to get more used to figuring those things out. The rest of the application was fairly easy to build. Though keeping track of all the routes without getting lost was a constant holdup for me. In addition to that, trying to keep my code as DRY as possible was constantly on my mind. Though trying my best to do so, I still think there can be a lot of improvement. There are parts where I know this can be written better but unfortunately, I do not have an easier alternative readily available. Constant repetition and communication with other people will certainly help me with that and I am sure my code will get dryer over time without me even noticing it. The last issue that I ran into was actually the flash messages. Some of them were working just fine and some just did not show up. To be honest, I still am not sure why some did not show up. I just kept switching through flash[:message], [:alert], [:notice] until eventually one of them started working. I substituted error messages wherever I could so that the code was not getting to repetitive. So overall, I am very proud of my project so far. I cannot wait to improve it more with Javascript!
12/6 13:25 In my previous blog I talked about my Sinatra Project. I decided to not mention the fact that I was trying to implement a checkbox feature where the user can check if a list or potentially even its list items is completed. I had such a big issue with it though that eventually I decided to just leave it out. It is still bothering me that I did not focus on it more at that point. There was a study group where the bossman had issues with the checkboxes also - granted he figured it out fairly quickly - but it motivated me to take a deeper dive into the issue. Where exactly is the problem with checkboxes? My main issue was that when it is unchecked, it does not send a value. Kind of as if it does not exist. So how can there be a boolean if it is either true or nothing, not even nil - to my understanding at least. In the study group the issue arose in a form_for situation where the value was always 1, even when it was unchecked. The solution for that was to set values to 1 and 0 in its f.checkbox field. This basically gave me the idea to think about the situation a little more and at this point, this is as far as I have gotten. The post will be ongoing until I can find a solution or answer that is appropriate for me.
Hello everybody! Welcome to another episode of the Gina Struggles. This month’s project was all about building a complete Sinatra application with an MVC paradigm, ActiveRecord, has_many/belongs_to relationships, user information, validations and error messages. I decided to go with a list application that lets a user create, update and delete his own lists, offers a community tab where you can see other user’s lists and search for specific people’s lists.
Welcome to the newest episode of the GinaStruggles. First off, I will now apologize for any words or terms that I misuse. Using the right terminology and explaining myself correctly has been one of my biggest issues.