DEV Community: Marty

Art + Code = 🌎💖🌀👽☯

Marty — Wed, 31 Mar 2021 17:56:58 +0000

Javascript is 25 years old and has a wide range of applications. As a student at flatiron school, my extent of javascript knowledge comes in the form of web applications. But I was curious to learn more about what javascript can do.
Looking back at my college years, I took a course that used the Java-based software called Processing.org. As I learned javascript I wasn't reminded of the possibilities of javascript until I saw the previous cohorts' projects, which were primarily game-based. And it took me back to the java projects I had created back in 2010.
https://youtu.be/ZS_2YorRsfo
This video shows a game that's objective is to 'pop' all of the floating boxes. Starting as a grey dot in the middle, use the up, down, left, right arrows on the keyboard to move around the gameboard and 'pop' all of the floating boxes.

In another project, I had used a photograph to 'pull' out all of the color values, or frequencies, and display the top values in a rectangle grid below the image.

[Processing.org[(https://processing.org/) is an open-source community of code that is primarily used for art and data visualizations. I was curious to see what changes had been made with the platform, as well as current projects created. That is when I discovered p5.js, which is a "JavaScript library for creative coding, with a focus on making coding accessible and inclusive for artists, designers, educators, beginners, and anyone else! p5.js is free and open-source because we believe software, and the tools to learn it, should be accessible to everyone."

Looking further at the p5.js 2020 showcase, I found that most projects used ruby/ruby on rails as the backend and javascript through react as the front end! This is exactly what I will be learning in phase 4 of my studies at flatiron school. I was impressed by the many creative applications of java and javascript. Here is one example of an artist, named JPL, that incorporated chrome extensions, typography, and computational design. You can view their project here
portfolio

code

When creating art through java and javascript, there is less use of functions that display HTML elements to a webpage and more application of functions that create artistic designs that use variables that require math.

This intersection of art and code is a representation of the intersectionality of people who code. P5.js sees inclusivity and intersectionality as a necessity within the world of code "We are a community of, and in solidarity with, people from every gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, language, neuro-type, size, disability, class, religion, culture, subculture, political opinion, age, skill level, occupation, and background. We acknowledge that not everyone has the time, financial means, or capacity to actively participate, but we recognize and encourage involvement of all kinds. We facilitate and foster access and empowerment. We are all learners."

The convergence of art and code is everywhere, from simple front-end design to complex interactive data visualizations. It is important to continually think about the human art experience through coding, and the impact art has on all aspects of life. Both art and code are representations and projections of the human experience, and to limit ourselves is a detriment to humanity.

hanif digitalMirror02

sources:
processing.org
p5js.org
blog.jpl.design/posts/s20/pixel-by-pixel/cyberflowers/
openprocessing.org/user/108498?view=sketches#sketches

Methods upon Methods upon Methods, WHO tells YOU it’s the right thing to do?

Marty — Thu, 11 Mar 2021 11:29:08 +0000

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.

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!

heredocs theredocs

Marty — Thu, 07 Jan 2021 18:48:47 +0000

Welcome to Wikipedia where everything you absolutely need to know in under 30 seconds or else it is worthless is right at your fingertips!

ADS ADS ADS!!! BUY BUY BUY!!! SELL SELL SELL!!!

This is perfectly pure hell. But if you really don't want to read through my ramble of surreal word vomit to make the 6 min mark, scroll down, that's where I actually talk about the content of this post.

tbh, Wikipedia is pretty great. I once had a rad punk programmer professor encourage us to use Wikipedia for sources. So about these heredocs. I was working my way through some Object Relational Mapping course work and one does and in this lesson, it tells me a 'Top-Tip!' about using heredocs for multiple lines of strings that you don't wanna use in your text editor because they will go on FOREVER.

And this lesson has the nerve to hyperlink
heredoc to the actual factual wiki page. Now, the lesson doesn't know this, or maybe isn't really in tune with me, but I'm already behind on studying, and I really don't have the hour+3 to decipher through a Wikipedia rabbit hole. I ain't got time for that!

I know what you are trying to do here, heredocs...

I'm like, oh thanks, thats cool, I'll check it out later. With the real intention of checking the link out later, but now it's buried in a thread of 43 texts in the group chat.

working my way through ORM labs, I keep having to write something similar within methods:

      sql =  <<-SQL 
          CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS tables (
             id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY, 
             name TEXT, 
             kind TEXT
             )
             SQL
      DB[:conn].execute(sql)

And I am completely bamboozled on where this:

<<-

came from.

So I go back through lessons, and I'm having the hardest time finding where it was explained. I then decide well heck, I'll google this see what comes up

Ohhhh and the search turns up heredoc! I remember that from somewhere???? I find that tiny paragraph about using heredocs ...and I'm still confused. Thankfully, I wasn't the only one. There were many resources, blogs, and posts already created for me and others to check out. Here's my take on it:

<<

this wants the end(closing marker, in this case HEREDOC) to be pushed all the way flush left to the text editor lines.
we can see this written out:

>  str <<HEREDOC
>     our many strings
>HEREDOC

=> "  our many strings"

<<-HEREDOC

gives us the freedom to place spaces or indentations in front of our end(closing marker) HEREDOC. This allows for a cleaner looking code!

>  str <<-HEREDOC
>     our many strings
>  HEREDOC

=> "  our many strings"

<<~HEREDOC

the squiggle acts in almost the same fashion as <<-
it allows us to indent and put spaces anywhere we like within the code, to keep it lookin' pretty. When it is printed to the terminal, it will close any indentations or spaces in the front of the first line.

>  str <<~HEREDOC
>     our many strings
>  HEREDOC

=> "our many strings"
   ^ notice this space is gone!

<<-'NOINTERPOL'

By placing our opening heredoc marker NOINTERPOL in 'single quotes' we are able to opt-out of interpolation, and we are returned a string with no attribute value.

>title = 'There There'
>str = <<-'NOINTERPOL'
>      The book is named #{title}.
>NOINTERPOL

=> "  The book is named #{title}."

And through learning more about how heredocs function, especially with formatting and syntax, I started to think of poetry. How the use of spacing, indentation, size of text, style can have a range of interpretation of infliction. It reminded me of the poem 'Someone In My Family' by Krista Franklin. The use of space as a visual element is also noted in the inflection and pace of the poem. Space changes its meaning, its time, and emotion.