DEV Community: Duke Norsworthy

Similarities: Coding vs. The Theatre

Duke Norsworthy — Sat, 25 Jun 2022 00:47:04 +0000

Recently, I finished a run of one of the more well-known Shakespeare plays, MacBeth. We had an interesting take of it, where the three witches (one including myself) oversee the show, the audience, and perform as musicians in the back of the stage. The idea wasn't too unique to me as a musician, but as I usually do, I have a lot of free time between songs to think about anything.

Though I pride myself in my craft as a musician, there are times where I come up with a great idea, and I'll want to code. Obviously, I can't get up and start coding while MacBeth and MacDuff have their epic battle. And then, it hit me.

Programming is so similar to theatre.

You have your props, they must be accounted for before going onto the stage for your grand moment, just as a page must be ready with its props in a React project.

The director leads us, bit by bit, as one part of "the code" is triggered to perform their lines (of code) after another.

Together with the design team (wardrobe, set/light designer - or, our CSS), our code comes to life with the beautification of the product.

Making this show has been rewarding to me, musically. But now I can finally focus back on why I'm here; back to choreographing and directing my projects for a wonderful audience.

My Experience with Flatiron

Duke Norsworthy — Mon, 24 Jan 2022 01:34:51 +0000

I started with an idea, some money I had saved up, rumors of how terrible Ruby on Rails was to use (how terribly wrong they are), and a drive to learn. My only development background was working on an EverQuest server and creating content using Lua (another great programming language, very fast!). Flatiron accepted my application, and my web development career began!

Javascript was a language I knew about, but not to any usable degree. Functions made sense, I've known about how they work from Lua. Expressions are simple, I've done math before. Putting it together with HTML and CSS to create an actual web page? Incredible. Absolutely astounding to me.

I've never heard of React before Flatiron, I only assumed that based off the name, it had to do with reacting to something that happens. BOOM, nailed it. Now we're working with multiple pages of Javascript at once? Sign me up. And now with hooks, react is SO much simpler to use instead of having to type this.props every 2 lines. A language that is continuously worked on and modified with hooks is bound to be incredible and popular with any company.

After working on API's that I have little control over, it was getting a little frustrating not being able to manipulate the data the way I wanted it to be. That's when Ruby came along. This is where I felt I started to shine. The power of Ruby and object orientation was fascinating to learn. That, and ActiveRecord Association, working with databases and SQL, was irreplaceable knowledge. Add Rails on top of that, and we have a remarkable application on our hands.

I'd have to say the greatest part was seeing Rails in action. Building a form that takes not one, but two separate models, creates a new iteration of each one in the SAME form, and puts the two together? That alone was worth the time and effort with Flatiron.

If you are on the fence about applying to Flatiron's Software Development course, let me tell you, my vote is yes. Do it. I'm certain it will change your perspective on coding as much as it has with me. I'm excited for my next project, and I hope you'll stay tuned for more!

Project 5: To-Do List, and my final week of Flatiron

Duke Norsworthy — Sun, 23 Jan 2022 06:50:48 +0000

It's been a wild ride. Since the beginning, I've been very stressed at the thought of going back to school. I'm still stressed thinking about it. I had a terrible experience in college. Coming into Flatiron, I was very apprehensive to the thought of "going back to school", but to think of how far I've come, and how much I've grown and learned, I'm glad I went for this.

And now it's time for my final project to show for it: The to-do list.

The gist of this list is that you can have your own personal to-do list, alongside multiple other shared to-do lists with other groups! Groups can be created by anyone, and those groups can be joined by anyone (this is to be changed soon, but I wanted the functionality of the groups to be priority).

Starting with the personal list, a to-do task has a category that can be placed with it to help organize your list! Each to-do has a checkbox in order to see if your to-do is done, and with that, the state of whether a to-do is done or not is saved. This way, the list is completely saved anytime someone refreshes their screen!

The exact same can be said for groups. The only difference between groups and the self-to-do list is that groups can work together on the same to-do list for their projects. This feature is designed with the idea of this app becoming a tool for companies and group projects!

I know for certain that I want to continue adding to this app, as well as improve the styling of it. This app will also be deployed via Heroku for anyone to use! https://to-do-list-capstone.herokuapp.com/

Project 4: Soundboard (and My Experience with User Authentication

Duke Norsworthy — Mon, 20 Dec 2021 03:00:50 +0000

My journey with Flatiron school is almost at an end. The other week I was reminiscing about how we had our final zoom class together, and barely noticed it. The journey has been long and hard, but very rewarding, but more on that in another blog.

In our final zoom classes, we discussed user authentication and passwords via Ruby on Rails. Surprisingly, our project said that password protection integration was optional. What's interesting about this is that password protection is SO simple!

Imagine your user model. It "has_many" whatever it has. Yeah, that's cool, pretty simple, no big deal, but that code looks so lonely. What if this simple bit of model code had a friend?

class User < ApplicationRecord has_secure_password has_many :whatever end

BAM! We're good to go.

Sure, you have to put in a little bit of front-end work to put in passwords for your sign-up and log-in features, but what is a little less work for a LOT more security? My cybersecurity friends told me many horror stories about their work, hacking into different companies' systems. The idea of not having a password, even on the simplest of applications, makes me think of them, and how easy it is to have information taken from someone. Why not reinforce your software and applications with a simple password?

One of the last things needed to be added to an app is a super simple parameter for your user controller - :password_confirmation. This parameter is already taken care of for you with that one little line in your model.

Yup. You has_secure_password now.

Time for the final phase of school: the Capstone Project!

Project 3: Ruby+Sinatra and React Router v6

Duke Norsworthy — Mon, 22 Nov 2021 15:58:15 +0000

What perfect timing for React Router v6 to be deployed as our next project begins! Honestly, this new version has been fairly simple to use. No more need for , I only needed to use and my . It always feels incredible to have clean code for the beginning of your project.

As seen above, you'll notice that my code is about musicians and their instruments. Using the functionality of Ruby, Object Orientation, Sinatra, and Active Record, I created a list of musicians with their assigned instruments. Active Record's use of associating tables together inspired me to create this as a test of my skills as an Object-Oriented developer. It was also fun to be able to put together my instruments that I own with my fiancée!

The best part is that I could simply add any new instruments or musicians to my list to be displayed! With the idea of the project being able to perform CRUD operations easily, I am able to create new instruments and musicians, read their information, update the instrument's owner (the musicians), and also delete either at any point in time.

Active Record and Object Orientation has been revolutionary as I begin to dive into more intricate projects like this. I've never been quite satisfied with any to-do lists or task managers for myself, as I've been searching since high school and when smart phones have begun their ascent into society. I've felt lost without one, but at this point, I think I can just create one using Active Record and Ruby! The two of these, with Object Orientation, have never made me feel like such an accomplishment could be so simple.

Onto the next one: Phase 4 - Rails, and putting it together with Ruby. I've heard a lot of bad things about Ruby on Rails, but if Ruby itself was this mind-blowingly amazing, I think this won't be any challenge at all.

Oh, and speaking of challenges, I passed my first ever live-coding challenges from Flatiron! The hard work I've put into this phase really shows, and it's only going to get better from here!

Project 2 Complete: Weather App!

Duke Norsworthy — Fri, 17 Sep 2021 17:12:44 +0000

It's been a while! I've needed to take a break from coding to deal with real life, but coming back has felt very refreshing.

My latest project shifted away from what I've wanted to do as a game designer/programmer, but a weather app that I could have at the touch of a button is still very convenient! Especially when I have it custom-built for myself.

I decided to give myself a challenge and build a weather app with a database to log in from. When you log in/sign up, you have the option to save the searched locations to your username. Then, when you log in, the list of locations will be displayed as buttons to click, and quickly see what the weather is!

React has been a challenge to learn, but now that I know it in and out, I feel almighty! POWERFUL! It's such a unique style of coding that prides itself on organization, and organized code is something I appreciate the most!

Next up, Ruby!

Project 1 Complete: DogSweeper!

Duke Norsworthy — Mon, 24 May 2021 02:14:15 +0000

Our first project is officially finished! We were tasked with three requirements: first, to fetch data from a public API, second, to run the app on one page only, and lastly, to use 3 separate event listeners. Since Minesweeper involves a lot of clicking, and I personally want to focus on game design and development as a career, I thought that this idea would suit wonderfully.

Making the actual game was easier than I thought. I created a bunch of cells using loops to create the x and y-axis of the board. As each cell was created, attributes are distributed so that the cells can have mines, a number of mines adjacent to them, or 0. After that was some grueling math in order to randomize the mines, and it was off to the event listeners!

In order to start the game and create the board, I created a simple start button to fill one of the 3 required event listeners. The second was using onclick() in order to play the actual game, reveal mines, etc. The third I used as both a test for the API, to make sure the images would come in perfectly, and that is my "I deserve a dog" button. Clicking this button will fetch the data from the dog image API I chose to use, so anyone needing a picture of a good dog could easily get one. The game will also fetch a dog for us when we win, but it's nice to have dogs on command!

This project, though poorly timed due to some family emergencies, was a blast to get through. It also reaffirmed myself that a career in game development is very possible, so I am thankful for the opportunity that FlatIron has given me.

If you need me, I'm going to go decompress from this week with some classic Dogsweeper.

Also, here is my dog. I have put her in the API as well. <3

My First Blog! Going Back to School for Myself and My Future.

Duke Norsworthy — Mon, 03 May 2021 15:34:37 +0000

It's-a me!

My name is Duke, and I've been coding for about 2 1/2 years now. I've gotten my start volunteering my time on an emulated EverQuest server, Shards of Dalaya. I learned Lua, a little bit of C, and got a glimpse at how the world of game development goes. Slightly unrelated, but I've also been a musician for 21 years, playing live events, recording CD's with friends, and making my own product at home. In a way, I hope that one day my two worlds could collide, as I would LOVE to work on music for a video game, or any media really.

As it says in the title, I've returned to school, specifically Flatiron School for Software Engineering! As of this post, week 1 has wrapped up, and the challenge is real. It's been slightly daunting, but I'm ready for it.

HTML and CSS has been fun to learn, especially it's artistic elements, but JavaScript has been a big wall to tackle. I knew about functions before with Lua, but function expressions, anonymous functions, returning function after function after function... my head is still spinning from some of this work, but it's only been week one. I'm still confident in my ability to overcome these obstacles, and I'll be blogging about it more. Who knows, if I become good enough at this stuff I'm learning, maybe my future blogs will be on my game development!

This blog will be a little shorter, as I planned on it being more of an introduction of myself. Stay tuned for my first JavaScript project within the month!

~ Duke