Enum vs. Active Record any?
Today at work I saw a really weird exception in prod. The code is in a Rails project using ActiveRecord and was something like this: […2 min read]
Posts/2016×4 entries
November 25, 2016
September 5, 2016
What your rails app does behind the scenes
Ever wondered what your rails app is really doing? When I first started learning Rails it seemed like magic. I finally got started building some rails apps and couldn't believe I could get one up and running in 5 minutes. What is this magic? Needless to say there's a lot going on behind the scenes. I was living in blissful ignorance, building away and not worrying about how it all worked until it didn't anymore. When the error messages stopped making sense, I realized I should probably dig a little deeper and see what Rails' magic is made of. You don't have to be able to rebuild Rails or even add to it, but understanding it is at least a start and, IMO, important if you're going to try to build with it, if only because it makes debugging so much simpler. I've still got a long way to go, but these are some notes from my first encounter with Rails' machinery. […6 min read]
August 21, 2016
Benefits of group learning
Another week flew by and I'm still working on getting a pacman game up and running. There's a great community of developers in Montreal, though, and they often host coding events, like the weekly coffee and code sessions I go to with Les Pitonneux. Thanks to lots of wonderful, patient people I learn a lot about web development and get closer every session to building amazing products that people will love to use. Working with other people is essential if you're trying to learn how to code. If you've thought openly about learning programming, you have already been told to not do it alone. I'm not going to preach about why you need to do it, but I have some advice for when you do find a group of fellow programmers or learners. […4 min read]
August 16, 2016
Learning how to code
Around this time last summer I started learning how to code. I had a wordpress website and wanted to customize it, then I got sucked into a rabbit hole and haven't really surfaced since. I realized I would only be able to make it so far coding in a box on a website with tutorials, as great as they are, and in the fall I decided to go all in. Now I'm starting my second gig as a "real" web developer and learning as fast as I can. As I go I'm learning as much about learning how to code as I am about coding itself. Here are a few of the most useful things I've learned so far and some tips if you want to get started learning how to code. […4 min read]