From A Student’s Perspective- Week 4
The time has come to take this relationship to the next level.
You may recall me mentioning my love for dear Ruby back when we were in the preliminary phases of this course, but to jog your memory here – Ruby is a dynamic, open source language with a focus on simplicity and productivity (AKA it is user friendly). And so, JavaScript, I bid you farewell. I appreciate the foundation you provided, but the heart wants what the heart wants.
Seriously though, this week was awesome. I would be lying to say it didn’t come with the expected challenges, but I am reaching a point where I can now hug those learning curves with open arms. Everything we’ve learned thus far has now become a language I can read and apply toward further dialogue.
Ruby is a user-friendly processing system which allows me to plainly say what it is I am looking to achieve without the worry of syntax. It is not as intricate and convoluted as JavaScript is, and has a direct way of just getting things done; Allan calls it Ruby Magic. Sorry JS, it’s not me, it’s definitely you. I don’t foresee us rekindling the flame anytime soon.
Throughout this week we took midday breaks to gather as a group and go over a hard problem that most people struggled with – this is known as a Dojo. The great thing about the dojo is that you aren’t required to participate, and sometimes being a bystander is just as impactful as being a participant. There are a couple of students that are definitely more advanced and already have a Computer Science background, so they push forward with more advanced problems whereas myself and other entry-level students would sit in to break down the problem. The variance in our class’ experience with this content has provided great insight from all perspectives.
One thing I struggled with was testing. Allan introduced us to BDD testing, which is supposed to be the most efficient and ‘best practice’ when learning to write Ruby, but I personally struggled with it. Basically, you have to write a test, then write a method in Ruby, and then test Ruby with the test. The result is writing twice as much code, and half the time I can’t even write the test correctly! Eventually it will save me from having to go back and find the bug, so for now I will suck it up until it isn’t even a second thought.