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DBC Phase 3 - Days 1-3 Reflection Notes

Memorable

Learned

Phase 3

At this stage, we’re supposed to know enough to take on the rest of the DBC curriculum in the role of ‘junior devs’ as opposed to regular civilians. Similarly, the learning goals seem centred around honing the habits that distinguish good developers from hackers. Some examples:

There’s more along that theme, and it’s pretty exciting to feel more comfortable with the definition of good programming and some solid steps required to get there.

Rails & Sorcery

The brief is to learn how to comfortably make apps with rails so that we can identify its limitations, leverage its advantages and know what questions to ask of competing frameworks/building options. So far, the amount of gizmos that rails provides via its conventions has been intimidating. It’s the first time since phase 0 that I’ve seen lines of code where I simply have no clue how to begin interpreting what they might represent and how they will behave. There’s a whole new set of reserved words to watch out for and “shortcuts solutions” that have been implemented for problems that I’m yet to fully understand, let alone be bothered by.

This will be an ongoing struggle for at least the next few days as I try to recreate apps from Sinatra and attempt to digest the mercifully thorough rails guides documentation. The confusion is very encouraging, but also very exhausting.

TDD in Rails and Beyond

Myles Byrne & Anne Spalding gave very illuminating lectures today on the topic of test driven development along with some insight into good git practice.

TDD in Rails
Git + Github flow

Other Flavours of Coding Kool-aid

Part of forming an opinion on what I like or don’t like about the plethora of options available to get the job done is asking other people what they think about certain topics. Some views that have stuck out so far:

Feels