The Basics of Soldering

This weekend I attended a beginner soldering class offered by Pumping Station: One. Going in to the class I had no idea how to solder (or knew that solder was also a noun). It was definitely a great introduction to basic soldering for circuit boards. Here’s what I learned!

Sinon.JS Uncaught TypeError

A few days ago I spent 2-3 hours trying to debug a red warning error. A very cryptic error indeed with no insight on how to fix it. Through a combination of trial and error, asking for help, and flipping tables I was able to find a solution to the problem. Here’s what worked for me.

A Necessary Alliance: Frontend & Backend

Throughout my apprenticeship I’ve primarily worked with Backend languages and technologies (such as Ruby and Sinatra), so when my mentor had me start working with Backbone the concept of a frontend framework was utterly baffling. This was my first step into learning the workings of a Distributed System.

Dissecting and Demystifying: Reduce/Inject

Reduce (a.k.a. Inject) is an enumerable method that recently made a whole lot of sense to me, so I figured that it was time to do a deep dive into how reduce works and what it can do for us using Blocks and Symbols.

The Land of Vim Part 1: Getting Started

Vim is intimidating, there I said it, but it doesn’t have to be!

There were primarily three reasons why I chose to switch over, the first being that a large amount of experienced developers use Vim and it would make it infinitely easier to pair program if I at least knew some basic commands, the second was recognizing the difference in productivity in keybinding vs clicking (I have World of Warcraft to thank for that), the third and last was that Vim made me uncomfortable and I wanted to change that.

Here’s what I did to get started.

Exploring the Lands of Public and Private Interfaces

Let’s talk about interfaces (and possibly spaghetti)!!

Interface can mean a bunch of things in different contexts, but in this post I’ll be referring to it as anything that is contained within a Class.

Re: Is TDD Dead?

After listening to Is TDD Dead? and attending DHH’s talk during RailsConf I have come to the conclusion that TDD is great as long as you test the right thing in the right way. Here’s why.

Hikers in the Woods - an 8th Light Tale

This story was shared with me by my mentor, Kelly, a few days before I started my first day as an apprentice.

An apprenticeship is like two hikers in the woods…

Ruby, Pass by What?

There are two questions that have been bugging me lately. The first, Why do I have to clone a guess in Mastermind? and the second came after I did some research, What is pass by reference vs. pass by value?

Let’s start with the first question.

So, You Want to Be a Mastermind?

For the last few days I’ve been writing tests for a game I’m working on called Mastermind.

What It Means to #AlwaysBeLearning

At Dev Bootcamp I learned how to code, how to overcome failure and fix mistakes, how to ask for help when needed, and most importantly how to continue learning on my own or with others.

Having graduated from Dev Bootcamp the only thing I was absolutely certain about was that I wanted to be an apprentice. I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to do Front-end or Back-end work.

So what exactly attracted me to the idea of apprenticeship?

RailsConf 2014 Recap

Rails is ten years old! -puts on party hat-

I had the wonderful opportunity to attend RailsConf this year! I learned so much from all the talks I attended, even the ones that were waaay over my head.

So what exactly IS RailsConf?

The Great Switch

Wooo! I finally got Octopress up and running! Any new posts will be written here from now on. You can check out my old posts here. I also found this nifty cheatsheet for Markdown!

So what’s this about a “Great Switch”?