Many, Many methods within our project 1 CLI, and im trying to remember where I was around January 5th.
Will these methods work in my rails application?
It's like following a trail of clothes backward, picking up the items, and putting them back on. Just like the Coldplay video for Scientist, which I couldn’t remember for the life of me. It took about 10 minutes and some tries at google’s search algorithm, but I found the video.
Now I'm not much a Coldplay fan, but this song is catchy and I will sing along with it when someone performs it at Alice’s. But now I’m wondering how I lost all of my clothes and the randomness of how they were discarded and how will I roll a car up a hill like Coldplay did? What’s the story behind each method?
As I look through my phase 1 project, I start to remember the order in which the methods came about. How we started to build one method but came to realize it relied on a method not yet created. It was an effort of jumping back and forth, following the ball of yarn the cat unraveled around the room.
As we created these methods, we would have to create helper methods that further elaborated on the code. Writing a method to find_therapists, required mapping over our seed data, creating a helper method, and then using that helper method within another helper method, to then be used in the main method. woof.
This is where my visual learning skills got lost. I couldn't SEE how each method was related, and what each method was doing in relation to its helper methods. It was a confusing mess of .map, .select, @'s, and #{variable}. I was only seeing the characters and could not envision how the application performed. When I say SEE, I define that as a visualization. A visual learner needs to SEE the information in order to process it. This information has to be represented in a visual form, like a graph, chart, diagram, model, video, sketch, or by doing. I can remember the visual, access it in my mind like a filing cabinet filled with video clips. Each clip will relate to clips that could have no typical association, which can lead down a memory hole accompanied by a Wikipedia hole. woof again.
Wireframes have helped me tremendously with understanding how a rails application works. I am able to SEE how each route, method, controller, and view file relate. By spending time on ERD, wireframes, and view pages in nested bullet points, I am gaining an understanding of how to build an application in rails.
But I still for the life of me can not remember the vocabulary! Searching becomes hard when you are trying to describe to google what is happening in a video. I get lost in anxiety and question why I can't remember ruby vocabulary since I started coding three months ago. Then I start to think about the troubles I had learning languages. How difficult it was to learn to spell, no matter how much I studied. Or trying to learn to read music, and somehow I made it by rote. Taking three years of Spanish, only to be lost in conjugations. But the languages of art, movement, and dance came easy to learn.
That is why color coding is my best friend.
Associating vocabulary with color, and implementing it within the context of the lesson, is using the human cognitive system and its memorization process. It allows me to clearly and quickly see the associations, differences, and similarities in ruby vocabulary. Even VS code does some color coordination!
In conclusion, each individual has a unique way of learning. Through learning code, I have noticed where my strengths and weaknesses lie, and how my learning process works. Remember to be kind to yourself as you journey through this new way of communication. And take a gentle note of the wonderful way your brain works!
Top comments (0)