Days 28 ~ 32

We finally got the whole MVC stack under our belts, and in short order, took our week 6 test over server side concerns. I waited through the weekend with baited breath to hear back about the results and they came out well enough.

Now we have moved on to our group project. It's a bit of slow going, as we're fresh developers inheriting a project from other fresh developers, and we are touch on, for the first time, Authorization/ Authentication Log ins, integrating Angular into a MVC project, and Web API all at once. We've just been picking our way though the code so far and soaking up the new material as quick as can be.

We have a strong group and our goal is to complete the project we have been handed. I hope it goes as well as all that.

Days 26 and 27

Continuing with the .NET stack, getting familiar with databases and using a "look up" table, working with those interfaces and adapters...

Biggest leap in understanding was with parsing out the information presented in build error messages. Those red squiggly lines can give you a lot of answers once you get friendly with them The red squiggly lines are your friend!

Not sure if I'll learn more by spinning up a new project or fixing an old project. Should do both if I had the time.

Day 25

Friday we got further into working with databases, implementing CRUD (what and unfortunate acronym), using controllers and adapters, seeding our databases, basically adding further compartmentalization to our projects. 

Over the weekend I tried to spin up a couple new projects, modeled after what we worked on in class. I ran into a few issues that delayed my progress toward completion, but ended up teaching me a lot more about file dependencies. I don't have a finished product to bring to class but I have a few questions I think the answers to will help expand my understanding of Entity Framework.

One more week of instruction before we get to work on our group project. I wonder how prepared I'm going to feel by then. 

Days 23 and 24

I got back into the swing of things and have caught up with LINQ queries and SQL databases. I really like that kind of stuff, making use of what could be huge amounts of information, only limited by processing time, typing in those those magic spells that give you back what you want the way you want it. I don't know how long it would keep me engaged, but it'd be nice to just work with databases for a while.

Tonight I attended a talk at the Microsoft office by an "MVC Blackbelt". Most of the issues he addressed were beyond the scope of my experience, but at least I was familiar enough with .NET and the MVC to follow along a bit. I took a few notes. Maybe someday one of those things will come in handy.

Days 21 and 22

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I always wondered why I saw that used as default text. I thought it was just kind of a fallback convention like "Hello World". Turns out there's some logic behind it. I found that out here .

This week we started working with databases using SQL. I keep hearing how terrible SQL is to work with but I find the commands very intuitive and it's interesting how individual lines of code can be executed. 

I was excited to start integrating this with C# but my body gave out on me last night. I was too sick to make it to class and it sounds like it was a bad day to miss. I need to catch up on LINQ, Entity Framework, using Git Hub through Visual Studio, probably some other cool stuff. 

Still feeling cruddy but I guess I gotta show and take my brain pills tomorrow so I can get up to speed. 

Days 19 and 20

We've been covering Post and Get methods in C# the past couple days. While I recognize the importance of this, I've been finding it unsatisfying as we haven't covered using databases for memory persistence yet. So anything we create remains hypothetical. It may be soon apparent why this must be, but I kind of wish we covered databases first so the result of our code was more tangible. All in good time though.

We've also been doing challenges on CoderBytes.com. I see how it could be useful to an extent, but I find it kind of frustrating to try and write code by committee. I think it's more beneficial to those in the class that haven't covered some basic coding concepts yet, but I just keep seeing incompatible code being implemented for the sake of illustration and I feel like the most I can contribute is pointing out why something suggested wont work. Maybe I would like it better if we tackled the challenges individually and then presented our different approaches afterwards.  It's just a minor gripe though. I still learn a lot by watching others work through a problem.

Day 18

Ok, C# and Visual Studio's MVC clicked for me today. Clicked in a big way. In a "don't let the general public know how much easier it makes our job", kind of way.

Wow, we came home with an assignment which included what looked like a silly amount of classes, view models, controllers, and views to write up. Once I had it planned out, it felt like Visual Studio was writing all the code for me.

Very cool feeling to have a tool under your belt that helps you move mountains.

Days 16 and 17

We've moved on to the second phase of Coder Camps. We are now working with C# in the .NET MVC. No individual aspect of this is all that different that what we've covered before. But somehow, dealing with the C# syntax, juggling models, views, controllers, access modifiers, etc is twisting up my brain pretty fierce.

Day 15

Days 12, 13, 14

Angular is not my friend. What really sticks in my craw is how obtuse the error messages are. Everything we've covered up until now I've gotten locked up tight, and when I trip over something, I've gotten pretty good at debugging. Angular has just opened up a whole new dimension of things that can go wrong. Before I just had to worry over whether my code was working but now I have to consider whether the issue is in my code, or on my view, or how my view is bound to my code, or how the new AJAX calls are interacting with the database...

Oh well, I'm just complaining cause Angular gave me a headache today. Also, part of the problem is I can't recognize how useful it could potentially be at this point. We kind of got sold on Angular with promises that it would cut down on the code we had to write, but really it seems like the juggling of all these views negates any coding time saved. I guess the real benefit is the ability to exchange views without refreshing the page, but I'm not dealing with anything that would necessitate bandwidth budgeting, so the virtues of Angular  remain to be seen by me.

A couple things have me excited though. There's an Azure event of some kind this Saturday that we were informed of this week. A few people at Coder Camps will be attending. I signed up for a space, and though know I'm worn down enough the thought of giving up my Saturday morning seems a little daunting, it would be the first industry sort of event I have attended. Before Coder Camps, I've never been around more than a couple people at a time that know anything any programming. I'm just kind of looking forward to immersing myself in the culture.

Also, I started working on some problems on Coder Bytes. I've tried programming exercises before but now I have a much better grasp of the vernacular and flow of operations, I actually made some pretty good progress during my lunch break. It's a really satisfying feeling to chew over a question of logic and see your solution work out!

A Zen Garden of Constructors and Function Calls

Something that has been impressed upon me recently is the importance of planning out a program before you start writing code. I understood this in principle before, but I didn't realize how easy it is to lose sight of.

When you learn something new, the temptation is to treat it like what you already know. Shoehorn it in to code you already know to work and hope for the best. Thinking as long as your variables and calls look similar to whats been demonstrated to you, things will work out.

Today though, I took the time to really understand Angular before I tried to start using it.

I even went back and cleaned up my existing code to cement my understanding of what I had written so far. I declared all my variables together. Put my master AJAX up top where I could reference it easily. Put all my HTML verb calls together. Wrote all the functions for my edit and delete buttons in the same place. Once I had it all mapped out, it felt like the code wrote itself. It made it so much easier to debug and play with.

After I had everything neat and tidy, it was much easier to see where Angular fit in. I still had some hiccups I needed a classmate to look at, and really for the most part I feel like I'm just adding "$scope." to a bunch of this I'd written before, but things fell into place a lot more gracefully than it would have been had I just kept hammering away at sloppy code.

Now I feel like I could whip up a website that could post to and update from a database in 15 minutes. My HTML, JavaScript, and AJAX has been cleaned up and smoothed out. The seeds of Angular have a peaceful place to grow.

Days 10 and 11

Welp, we're into week three. Left Friday with an assignment to work on our "Twitter apps". I had been doing pretty well, got that master AJAX call working on most components, but then my brain turned to mush and I kept running into problems I couldn't think of any solution to other than throwing more code at them. By Monday my app was kind of a mess with everything half working. The profile would update but all the picture links were broken. The database would  be updated with new friends that wouldn't be written into my HTML table. The thing that drove me craziest trying to figure out was the 'Delete' buttton that only worked after two clicks.

I took a look at a classmate's JavaScript. He kept his code much more organized than mine and made good use of constructors to make his objects. I think I've just been trying to push ahead so long I lost sight of the big picture of how it all works together. My classmate's code worked better than mine, but even if it wasn't demonstrable more efficient, I think there's a lot to be learned from writing a working version of code in another style, just to gain deeper understanding of how your own code works.

Half an hour after class ended, I had my app rewritten and working perfectly. Ready to tackle today's assignment.

We had our introduction to Angular. I still don't know exactly what to call Angular. It's like a JavaScript add-on MVC framework thingy. All I know is it's supposed to simplify the JavaScript calls we've been writing. I don't have enough of a grasp on it to see how it'll make things that much easier, but I got a good start on today's assignment, so at least I have a feel for how to write it. Hope it comes in handy.

Day 9

Getting those AJAX calls figured out. Covered a master AJAX call that shortens the code quite a bit and after a good deal of debugging, I got it working on my previously built apps.

Going into the weekend, we have been assigned to basically recreate Twitter. We'll see how that goes.

Day 8

Today we continued working on AJAX calls. Got my code posting to a database and writing objects values to an HTML table. Still not certain on what every line of those AJAX calls means so I need to study that a bit more.

My big take away from today was improving my debugging methodology. Getting better at understanding the DOM and Console inside a browser and using that info to debug my code.

Trying to get a time stamp on objects taken from a database. Close, but it still changes when I update the table. Got to get that static time stamp.

Days 5, 6, 7

Friday ended our first week of Coder Camps. We left with an assignment to whip up a simple quiz app. The requirements were to display 5 questions with 4 answers each, when an answer is selected the user should be informed if the answer is correct, only display one question and answer set at a time, and to keep track of the user's score. The stretch goals were to use CSS transitions and animations, and to display an image for each question. I got it pretty much done by the end of the day Friday and touched it up over the weekend.

You can see it HERE (minus the animations for now)

 I went into Week 2 feeling pretty good about myself. Project finish, caught up on sleep. I swear I slept 16 hours Friday going into Saturday with constant vivid dreams. I could practically feel my brains data organization mechanisms firing off. Anyways, come Monday I felt ready to tackle anything. We covered the use of objects and arrays in JavaScript and got an assignment to create a web-form that allows the user to input properties of a "Super Hero" and have those values written to a table on the HTML page. I got through that quickly enough and moved on to the next phase of the project.

 We were to create a similar app, but one which utilized an object within the array and had a Delete and Edit button. This Delete button caused me a world of hurt. I figured out the syntax for a function that would delete an object off the array a rewrite the table to display the updated result. I tied the function to a button. When I clicked the button, nothing happened. I relocated the location of the function on the JavaScript page, rewrote the HTML displaying the button, tried alternate functions, combed over every line and character of code I had written. Nothing I did got that button to do anything.

 I felt awful going into Tuesday with my assignment incomplete. I had a sinking feeling I would fall behind in the class. But, there was nothing more I could do on my own. I turned the problem over in my mind again and again, approaching from every angle I could consider. I was at the mercy of my instructor and classmates. I both looked forward to and dreaded the moment where my simple oversight was pointed out and my code worked perfectly.

 Well, it wasn't as simple as a syntax error or misplaced function call. Turned out I got into trouble because of how I named my function. Apparently, "clear" is a reserve word in HTML. My function was "clear()". A simple renaming to "clear2()" got my function running and those object cleared off of my array. Hours and hours spent trying to fix a problem that was barely there.

 There's no way I could have known all the reserved words in any language at this point. It does give give me another perspective to approach debugging now though. I think I see why programmers use exotic, silly names for there variables now. It's too easy to run over a word that has some assigned use in a language already.

Day 4

We covered JavaScript objects today. Mostly just an extension of arrays we covered the day before. We implemented objects as a data collection method in our "To Do" apps. I find myself stubborn in adapting new methods of adding functionality to a program once I already have it working with a previously covered set of knowledge. I think it's easier to just start from scratch when it comes to implementing a new code element. Maybe I should keep my code more compartmentalized so new tools can be used on it.

We received an assignment to create a Quiz application. After some incessant picking at my "To Do" app, I spent about an hour working in the Quiz. I got as far as a button calling a function to display a new question when clicked. Adding new results to the function should be enough to get the Quiz usable. We'll see what new issues arise.

I didn't make any notes to myself on what to write on the blog today. Forgot my pen and notebook. I'll write something more insightful when I have a better record and more sleep.

Day 3

Today we went over arrays in JavaScript. We modified our projects from day 2 to utilize arrays to hold the values of text input fields. Still very satisfying when we got them to work, but so frustrating to change code that's already working to use a feature you aren't well practiced in. Any bit of code I can get to work is still precious to me. Feels reckless to fiddle with it after I get it working.

We also got an introduction to the Bootstrap css format. Very enlightening to learn such a practical tool and realize how widely implemented it is. I feel like I'm progressing as a web developer, but even more so I feel like I'm learning how much less difficult development is than I assumed it was. One of those "a day to learn, a lifetime to master" sort of deals I guess.

Also our instructor mentioned an interesting thing about JavaScript. Seems iteration using variable++ is frowned upon as it can be a security liability. Who would thunk?

Learning and Teaching

Today we did our first paired programming exercise. As the requirements were laid out, I formulated a step by step solution to implement the necessary code. It wasn't perfect, but would have put me on the right track. When it came time to close my laptop and communicate with my partner, I found we had different ideas on how to approach the problem.

My partner was much more experienced than I, and in the end he found a very clever solution. But as were drifted further from my initial approach, I found myself grasping the concepts less and less. Maybe I would have followed along better if I had more sleep the night before. I think anxiety still has a hold of my sleep patterns. It was frustrating not being able to put my fingers to the keys. It really showed me some of the limitations of my understanding.

I was however able to convey to another camper how to implement my Morse code translator code into a script that allowed him to take user input of a country of origin and return a greeting in said country's native language. Teaching him that helped solidify my understanding of the code I had previously written.

I'm learning a lot about coordination in programming.

Day 2

Today we covered some interesting aspects of JavaScript I hadn't yet come across. Mainly some best practices in response to the order in which JavaScript reads variables. Some real good practical knowledge I never encountered in my self-study.

We also covered some HTML, which in itself wasn't new ground for me, but implementing it within Visual Studio opened up a lot of possibilities I was unaware of. VS's Intellisense functionality seems like a huge time saver and a good way to explore options I had no idea existed. I couple spend hours just typing in an attribute for an HTML element and running through the drop down menu of values Intellisense provides.

Taken together, I was able to improve the script I wrote a few months back (not yet implemented). I had been trying to think of a way to write the results to the webpage for people to copy. Now I know!

Languages

My sister was asking me today how I remember all the different components of a computer programming language.

I told her simply, I don't.

Through the internet, I have access to the full vocabulary of any programming language. I only need to know that something might exist, and if so, how to find it.

My sister is learning Swahili, so I gave her the example of trying to find the word for 'internet' in Swahili. It's a word of recent origin and largely used within specific professional communities, so it was likely to be a borrowed word with maybe some slight phonetic variation. From that context, one could assume that using the word 'internet' within a larger Swahili dialogue would be understood by the listener.

She told me the Swahili word for 'internet' was 'biashara ya', so maybe it was a bad example.

The point stands, it's more important to understand how a programming languages operates than memorizing all its components.

Day 1

I just completed the first day of Coder Camps.

Up until now, I've just been covering the prerequisites leading up to the course. They consisted of lessons on HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Visual Studio Express for Web.

I had covered the coding elements before on my own, so the prereqs were mostly review for me. The most enlightening thing I found was just downloading VS for Web and running through a couple tutorials. It was interesting just working with the same tools professional developers use to create enterprise level web applications.

I've used the analogy that Visual Studio is like Photoshop. Previously, writing code line by line, it was like creating a picture pixel by pixel. Visual Studio allows a developer to paint a website in broader strokes. VS has the templates and built-in functions that make developing an enterprise level website feasible in a timely manner.

Day 1 of camp has largely been a review of the prereq material and a presentation of the teaching philosophy.

Looking forward to jump into fresh material soon.