gets(et).go

All coders have to start somewhere, no-one innately comprehends code. It may surprise you to learn that I am no exception and I, too, had to start somewhere. For me that somewhere was a little place I like to call Codecademy... because.. that is its name.

Makers Academy pointed me in this direction after I applied for the coding bootcamp. They asked me to complete the introductory course in a programming language called Ruby for my interview with them. I'll be talking a lot about Ruby, so remember that name!

This post will charter the two week journey from knowing nothing about coding to landing a job as a junior developer knowing something about coding.

Don't tell anyone...

What it is they say? Something about every journey begins with a single step? Well my first step, like all those before me was this:

 puts "Hello, world!"

This is the first program most people write, in any language. It looks pretty basic and what it does is  entirely unremarkable, but it is what it is. Let me deconstruct it for you and explain what it does.

The first part of this program is puts dumbed down this basically instructs the computer to put something on the screen. There's a bit more to it than just that but for the purpose of this explanation, that will suffice. The second bit "Hello, world!" is what will be put on the screen. It's coloured green so you can identify that it is a string (sorry if you're colourblind).

word to the wise: a string is just a group of characters - but it's handy being able to tell what type of thing something is by what colour it is, you know?

Did we understand that? I hope so because I'm moving on anyway.

Codecademy is good. It holds your hand. I completed it in about a week and it had me thinking I got this. I'd written some programs and learnt about some fairly complicated coding techniques. I thought I was ready. Makers Academy also wanted me to have completed the first eight chapters of Learn to Program, a tutorial written by Chris Pines.

This experience was a little different. Firstly it wasn't all neatly contained inside a virtual environment accessed through my browser on the internet. It was on my computer. I was making my computer do things and I didn't fully understand how. Whatever, just get on with it.

Now i was writing code and it was on my computer and I was accessing it through the command line (like some hacker) and getting it to do the things that I wanted it to do. This was real stuff. These exercises were harder, they didn't hold my hand, they required more effort to do but it was worth it.

 puts "Hello dear.."

 count = 0

 while count != 3
     input = gets.chomp
    if input == "BYE"
         puts "What?!"
         count = count + 1
    elsif input == input.upcase
         puts "No.. not since #{rand(1930...1950)}."
         count = 0
    else
         puts "What?!"
         count = 0
    end
 end

 puts "Bye then"

This was a program that I was extremely proud of when I wrote it. I felt like I had written my first program without a step by step guide and got it to do some pretty complicated things. It was so satisfying to watch my computer do what I wanted it to do.

It's called the Deaf Grandma program and is one of the challenges in the book by Chris Pines. It started off as a simple program that would take some user input and then reply with either "WHAT?!" or "No.. no thank you". Unless the user input was all capital letters then 'Grandma' would not be able to hear and would reply pretty rudely. If it was all capitals then she would still mishear you (because she's going deaf, you see). It then evolved into something more complex, adding in a random number from a predefined range with the response and requiring the user to say "BYE" three times in a row to end the program.

(*￣∇￣*) - stop it! I'll blush!

Don't be fooled though. This short program took me a long time to create with a LOT of trial and error as I still didn't fully understand everything I was doing (I still don't). But that is what being a coder is all about: problem solving. And in this case, problem solved!

All this and I haven't even been accepted onto the course yet!

After throwing more than one tantrum completing chapter 8 of Learn to Program I wasn't sure if I had done enough to succeed in my interview for Makers Academy. I'd worked through all the material provided but I didn't feel like I really understood it all.

It was okay for me to be feeling like that. I expect I'll probably be feeling like that for the entirety of the course. And so will everyone else. It's important to keep it in perspective and just take it once step at a time.. because that's all us humans can do.. because we only have two feet.

I'll tell you about my interview and first impressions of the Academy in Shoreditch, London in my next post - so check back another time, if you're so inclined.

this.is_a?

Hello and welcome, this is my first post and if you’re reading this I can only assume you’re lost.

Perhaps I can help you find what you were looking for:

You found this blog on the Internet. I don’t know if you got the memo, but the internet is pretty much only used for googling funny pictures of cats. Go on, it’s fine – I understand the confusion and won’t be offended. Enjoy lolling forever.

If you’re still reading then I suppose I may as well give you the, the down low, if you will, on what be gwan on this blog. Who am I? What brings me here? And what, pray tell, is this here blog to become? Well, get ready, because here it comes.

I can’t believe you made it this far. You’re probably my most loyal reader and I should probably arrange some sort of prize for you. But I have no money and rather than turning to a life of crime I’ve opted for a career change into something altogether more exciting. Maybe when I make it big I’ll buy you all the things you deserve, maybe I won’t. Probably the latter but roll the dice, why not?

Talk is cheap, but its all I have for you right now. My name is Jack, I’m 25 and so far life has not worked out exactly as planned. Perhaps the lack of plan is to blame, perhaps not, the technicalities are not important. What is important is that after achieving a decent degree at a decent university I have not found myself the decent job to complete the set. I tried a few things, allowed myself to be exploited in a few no-hope internships and wound up in management in hospitality. It was alright, but I missed using my head. To be honest the unsocial hours really started to bite and getting into a new relationship pretty much sealed the deal – I wanted to live in the same time as everyone else, too often have I said “No.” to friends’ birthday parties and lost touch with people I considered important.

I want to go to birthday parties.

My original plan had been going into the tech industry, programming, development, that kinda thing. However I ended up doing something completely different at University and while that was a wonderful experience and I wouldn't change it, I had thought the door to a career like this was forever closed unless I were to acquire the key in the form of another undergraduate degree. No thanks. Then I heard about coding bootcamps.

There are more than a few initiatives trying to get young people into coding, it seems there are more jobs than coders out there. I’d had the idea in the back of my mind for a long time, but like I said, I didn’t think I had the key. I don’t remember exactly where I found out about bootcamps but im certainly glad I did!

In the nutshell it’s a short-term intensive course to get you from “derrrr” to Coder and ready for employment as a Junior Software/Web Developer. That’ll do me just fine. It isn't cheap, but I believe it will be worth it.

This blog will serve as a diary of my musings running up to, during and probably after this course.

You can expect more top-drawer posts such as this one with ramblings about code that I probably don’t really understand just yet. I’ll be posting examples of my handiwork to prove how crude and ugly my code is. Looking back on these will be a real treat.

Hopefully my journey will be worth following, even if its not I imagine it will still be cathartic for me to map it. But if you’d rather look at pictures of cats, I get it. Sometimes I’d rather do that too.