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Loving Pragmatic Studio - Ruby

26/11/2014

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I am not sure if Pragmatic Studio guys have a 'PS I love you' sticker floating around but I would definitely put it up. I just signed up for their Ruby course a couple of a days ago, and as I said in the headline, I'm loving it. So much so that this happens to be the second post about them in two days. While the previous post was also about rubber ducking and tealeaf academy, I thought I would dwell a bit more specifically on PS. 
I tweeted to them this morning saying I'm kicking myself for not signing up earlier. Still, better late and all that. I've finished about half of the course (I'm at the rspec stage).
Forget Treehouse, forget Udemy and other portals. This should be the first stop for your Ruby course (and I'm sure for Rails as well, because they have a Rails course too. There's something very friendly and nice about the way the teachers go about covering all the essential aspects. In a way, it's good that I've taken Ruby and Rails with other sites such as Treehouse where I still have a Silver membership and Udemy with whom I have many courses, as this gives me a better perspective regarding Pragmatic Studio. 
I feel like  I'm actually understanding what I'm learning. The module has two lessons running parallely. The teachers code a movie programme while you code a game based on that. And there's a bonus section which encourages you to code a funding project like Kickstarter. I am doing all three which is fantastic. I know what I'm using methods, why I need classes, what attr_accessor is and why we need them ... things which were hazy at best with other courses (maybe it's just me). 
You know that feeling you get after finishing a course that, somehow, you're not sure what you just spent money on? Well, you don't get that with Pragmatic Studio. Hope the happy coding experience continues. Will keep you guys posted. Meanwhile, if any of you reading this are interested in learning Ruby or Rails, don't make the mistake I made of looking around for too long. Just sign up for PS. You'll thank me later. 

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Tealeaf Academy, Pragmatic Studio and Duck abuse

23/11/2014

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After signing up for Tealeaf Academy's Ruby course, I managed to solve two of the problems, the calculator challenge and the Rock, Paper, Scissors project. They worked too which was encourag_ing and satisfying. Then came the tough parts: Tic Tac Toe and Blackjack. I got the higher language or pseudo logic part quite right (you are encouraged to use English to write down the solution, and introducing code to convert the steps into a working programme) but the problem was in understanding what code to write to translate the pseudo-code into a working one. I am an author and a freelance writer. Logical thinking is as far away from me as saving for a rainy day is to a bachelor on his first salary. This knowledge helped me from smashing my new Mac and throttling the duck.
Did I tell you about the duck? In proamming circles, apparently, they have this method whereby you are supposed to talk to a rubber duck. You tell him your problem, what's keeping you from writing a working code, lying down on a counch while the duck takes notes, yawns, looks at the watch and says, We'll meet next week, meanwhile remember what we talked about today', and charges you $80 a session. 
It's called Rubber Duck Debugging. This, they say, helps. While I see the logic behind talking out your problem loud, I fail to see how a duck can prevent himself from serious threats to his life from frustrated programmers, most of whom are rookies like me. There were times I wanted to beat the crap out of the duck, like Happy Gilmore. That'll only end up in a trail of dead ducks, so to speak. So I took the Codecademy course and finished it in a day and half. Must say it was quite informative for a free course.Finished a couple of Ruby modules on Treehouse. Still, no clue about how to code the blackjack game. So I looked at the solution and did the TicTacToe and am currently doing the Blackjack game. The instructors say you must make some serious attempts to try and code before going to the solutions videos which makes me a trier at least.
The thing is, some of the steps don't even occur to me. I'm sure this is the case if you come from a non-coding background. I've only got the coding bug a few months ago. While trawling the Net, I stumbled onto the Pragmatic Studio again, and this time decided to give it a shot. They were having a discount on their 9th anniversary, and it was affordable, so signed up for their Ruby course, and finished 15% as of now. I like what I see there, like the teachers, and the way they've laid out the programme. It feels good. Progress report to continue, till next time, happy coding, and spare the duck.  


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Codecademy Ruby

17/11/2014

1 Comment

 
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I'm on Tealeaf Academy's Ruby course. To take a bit of diversion and supplement my Ruby adventure using an external source other than Tealeaf, I decided to take up the Codecademy Ruby as Chris suggested in one of his Tealeaf videos. 
I just finished it, about ten minutes ago. Took me a day and half of sitting in front of the computer, following the codes samples, exercises and googling some errors or referring to their Q&A section. It was a very smooth and enriching experience on the whole. The console wasn't buggy and the frustrating moments were few, thankfully. You must remember though, that the console expects every code to be letter-perfect down to the period or exclamation. For instance, if, in the exercise it tells you to 'puts "This is your balance!" and you miss out the !, it will keep throwing up errors. So develop a keen sight for these niggling punctuations. You will run into some minor errors but nothing that a short trip into the Q&A sphere can't solve. Or just google your problem and append it with Codecademy Ruby and someone else would have faced the problem in all likelihood.
The window to the left of the console where you get the instructions, and the intro is quite informative. I learnt a few things I didn't learn on other sites. I am on Team Treehouse as well, and they have a few Ruby and Rails courses. 
I'll see if I can post some issues I faced and how I managed to solve them in the next post. Meanwhile, I have to get back to creating a Blackjack game on Tealeaf.
Happy doing! 3.times {puts "Yay"}
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    This is a chronicle of my journey into coding. I'll post where I am at on the road to learning Ruby with One month Rails and HTML/CSS with Teamtreehouse, and Python which I'm learning on my own. Ambitious for a writer? You bet!

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My other sites:  Music is about memories: http://radiomemories.blogspot.com, http://radiomemories.weebly.com/
A site dedicated to the genius of Kannadasan:http://kannadasansongs.blogspot.com 
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