One Brick at a time
I’m towards the end of Week 2 @The Firehose Project and I have to say. I’m learning so much not only how to build web apps but the challenges that can come along the way. Having built one Ruby on Rails web app in week one, I felt accomplished and got to know the process in beginning the development. Now Week Two on to another app and oh, the challenges I faced. Not only did I begin the app project, but then realized I was to build my own app from scratch to apply some of the knowledge I learned, blog and school work all at the same time.
I was beginning to feel a bit like screaming out, though not a good idea in a house full of people.
It’s interesting how when you finally are doing something you love and applying yourself how life seems to throw a whole bunch at you. I am extremely focused on this bootcamp and school and now it seems people who I have tried to work on projects with are now coming out the woodworks.
I had to take a step back and think. What are my priorities? How can I manage my time?
I came to the conclusion of spending so many hours on one task.
Break…
Then on to the next task spending so many hours on that and so forth. Focus on things one at a time. If I came to an obstacle, I would be proactive in finding the answer whether googling, or other resources. If I couldn’t solve it, then I would take a break from that , work on something else, and come back to it.
Most of the time the answer turned out to be something I overlooked and thought to hard about.
One of my biggest challenges was building my own web app. Not necessarily how to start, but what would I create. As I’m fairly new in Ruby and Ruby on Rails, I followed the process to get the Web Environment set up, create the app folder, set up my Git repositories and heroku.
I wanted to try and see if I could remember the beginning steps as far as creating my empty database, controllers and models. Then from there, installing gem files like bootstrap, modifying my scss and routes, etc. As I was coding along, I did have to reference some material as I realized some steps I missed when I would get errors related to paths or methods.
I admit most of my challenges came from thinking after one week I would be able to flow right through on my own. I had to realize it’s only week 2, don’t be so hard on myself and give myself credit for what I have accomplished thus far.
One brick at at time….
This is all it takes. I’m building my skills and gaining more knowledge. I find myself sometimes wanting to know it now, when in actuality everyone started from somewhere and through repetition and application became better.
The first brick….
was starting the program.
The second brick….
going through the lessons and understanding what I am learning and how to apply it.
The third brick…
opening myself up to write about my experiences.
……next
Continue to move forward towards my endeavors.
I’ve definitely got a glimpse as to how professional developers can have multiple projects their working on and may sometimes have some challenges, yet get through it. So if I’m just starting out, what do I expect? Of course there will be challenges as I’m aware, but that’s what makes it interesting and the end results are well worth it to see that idea come to reality.
