This post was originally published on February 9, 2021 on my blog.
I've been steadily working through my Ruby course for work (it's Learn Enough Ruby to be Dangerous with Michael Hartl), and it's really great. I'm loving the video learning with the subsequent written explanations of the same content as it really helps me dial in each lesson.
I try to spend at least an hour on that each morning when I start my workday, and I'm proud to say I have just two chapters left of the 10-chapter course! Yesterday, I was so excited to go through the lesson on Test Driven Development, especially since I had a bit of a crash course in the application side of testing just a couple weeks ago.
I'm so glad I got that experience of really being challenged with testing before actually starting the learning process from scratch - kind of like jumping into the water without knowing how to swim but getting yourself to safety and then subsequently learning the techniques of swimming from the very first levels.
Actually, the way I'm even learning about testing now is kind of meta in that I tried it out first, failed a few times, got myself to pass the test of learning how to test however I could, and now I'm learning the actual techniques for it and am able to refine and refactor my own methods.
Whoa. I think I may have just broken my brain a little bit with that realization!!!
Anyway, within the course, I think the only sections left are a chapter on Shell Scripts and then a build-along type of project.
One step at a time, always! I committed to doing a little work on the course each day, or almost each day, and look at that - we're already almost to the end!
Along with the Ruby course, I've also simultaneously started going through a Rails tutorial on GoRails - we're building a Buffer-type application where we can schedule tweets. I am really loving it!!
This, again, is similar to being thrown in the deep end with trying to navigate a production-level codebase and then getting back to the very basics with a tutorial built from the ground-up.
It's an amazing way to learn - it's really challenging, and at times frustrating - but I'm feeling that the lessons are being reinforced in such a powerful way!
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