August 2015 Archives
Prequel to the SQL
Yeah I couldn’t resist.
So today marked the first major subject shift we’ve had: Ruby to SQL! In some ways it was tough, because we now have to stop thinking about “methods” and “returns” and “objects” and replace that vocabulary with “clauses” and “select” and “tables”. For the most part it’s fairly straightforward (and when it’s straightforward, it’s REALLY straightforward–as my partner put it, it’s just English, almost), although more complex JOINs did prove a challenge, especially when a subquery just comes so much more naturally.
Happy Fun Times with RSpec
…more like how I never knew how good I had it, blithely debugging code with pry and byebug, until I was introduced to the severely more structured and demanding RSpec. I mean, I totally understand how it’s useful and certainly, a well-written rspec file can serve as documentation for your program, but it uh takes some getting used to. And to write a really thorough and complete rspec, with testing of edge cases and all that, is tedious, I think anyone would agree. But yes I can see why it’s important to know it, and as a project grows, having well-documented rspecs would definitely increase robustness.
More details…
Checkers = Restaurant Chain?
First solo day today! Hah it’s strange to think that I used to think pair programming was unusual; now it’s days like today, our first non-pair day, that feel different. However it was nice having my very own(!) keyboard and mouse.
The assignment was to create a Checkers game (apparently, according to Wiki, “English draughts”). It was a really good review of methods and concepts we had covered over the past couple of days, and was pretty straightforward after Chess and Minesweeper.