Since October, I had been struggling with the CLI Data Gem project and all of its components. When I was brainstorming ideas for what to do, I knew I wanted to do something involving films. Scrapping data from a list of films specifically related to genres or a “greatest” ranking seemed ideal. It was something I could have fun doing, but also learn vigorously along the way. I was very excited to figure out the process of scrapping data from a website and combining it with what I learned in the lessons and labs. However, it was a lot more to digest than I thought and it became one of the greatest challenges in my coding journey so far. My issues with this project arose from the hiatus I had taken after finishing a majority of the Object-Orientation unit. I had been progressing through the material at a reasonable place during the first three months at the Flat Iron. There were times I would spend at least eight hours a day studying and experimenting with the concepts and methods. But then I hit a roadblock mentally where it was overwhelming to code. The passion that I had was nearly gone. This roadblock that I hit taught me a lot about myself. It tested my time management skills, organizational skills, as well as refreshing my mind with the content I had learned.
Throughout the past month or so, my progress at the FlatIron has decreased drastically. When I first started at the FlatIron in June, I established a couple of goals for the progress I wanted to make. I was hoping to be finished sometime in November or December. However, when I reached the Object Orientation in Ruby, I became a bit overwhelmed with the threshold of material I had to learn and all of the concepts involved.
As programmers, we are always looking for the most efficient solutions when it comes to writing our code. It’s been nearly two months since I started at the Flatiron school and so far it’s been an incredible experience. Before diving into Ruby and Git, I had only been familiar with HTML and CSS. Learning Ruby has been both exciting, but also a challenge, but I’m beginning to visualize all the variety of content that you can create with it. I’ve found Ruby to be quite intriguing, particularly how it builds on object relationships. I’ve been taking it one day at a time, trying to become proficient with Ruby, but more recently I’ve encountered some interesting issues.
One of the most crucial elements of beginning to learn code at The Flatiron School is getting to know GitHub and how it works. Whether you’re using learn.co or terminal, it’s important to remember that GitHub holds all of the respositories for your labs and lessons. For those who haven’t done a single ounce of code, becoming familiar with submitting projects to GitHub can be a bit tricky. Here are some simple instructions if you’re just getting started.
Building and creating have always been passions of mine from an early age. Whether it was spending hours constructing things with Legos, sketching floor plans of houses, or building my communities of SIMS, I was constantly trying to craft my own masterpiece, something imaginative and unique. I also learned how to use and navigate a computer pretty quickly so I would spend a good amount of time using Adobe Creative Suite, CAD, and Blender. With that in mind, I became very interested in pursuing architecture in high school, but it was never something I followed through with. When I started applying to colleges, journalism seemed like a much easier route until I decided what I really wanted to do. Writing was also one of my strengths so I figured it could be something enjoyable.