DEV Community: thomasprinn

TIL (Ruby) Each

thomasprinn — Wed, 09 Aug 2023 18:09:14 +0000

I feel that the array and each sections were the most difficult for me, but when they clicked, they really clicked!

For example, I initially struggled with figuring out how to count and compare the number of characters to the word they were a part of, as seen in lesson 76 for the letter count activity:

word = ["photo", "like", "commenter"].sample
sample_word = word.to_s

sample_word.split("").each do |sns_component|
    pp sns_component + " appears " + sample_word.count(sns_component).to_s + " times"

end

This is my completed code, and it works, but I found it necessary to write out my understanding for future reference.

When I used sample_word.split("") in the do loop, the word was split into a new array consisting of individual letters. This new array needs to have its' elements individually counted in order to complete the activity.

So when I went to print the statement and used .count(), adding sns_component into those parentheses allowed the code to look at the number of times each of the new elements in the new array (individual letters) occur in sns_component (which concerns the original array at the start of my code, and contains whole words for elements).

This was a great example of understanding what I needed to do, but not being entirely sure how to do it until I went, "what if I tried this?" with .count(sns_component). It feels rather obvious in hindsight, but these exercises were very similar to a recent interview I had (and struggled with) so being able to talk myself through it on my own was a great breakthrough.

At the very least, I hope that's the correct way to speak about it - maybe I'll look back and wonder why I thought of things in such a complicated matter when I improve!

TIL (Ruby Fundamentals)

thomasprinn — Wed, 09 Aug 2023 04:00:58 +0000

Due to some IRL mishaps I'm a bit behind still, but I was able to finish up the Codeacademy Ruby course, the What, why, and how assignment, and go through the Ruby modules on Canvas.

I noticed something interesting:
When using

self.pp(2.add(3))

if I add

print self

to the code,
why is the output for print self "main"?

It turns out that self is a special object - the main object for the example, so Ruby is telling me exactly that.

I also didn't know that there was a difference between using print and pp, so I'll practice it.

Comparing objects and methods to nouns and verbs helps a lot.
There are many interesting terms such as "pretty print", "syntactic sugar" that make learning Ruby a little more unique and easy to remember compared to other programming languages.

TIL (link in bio)

thomasprinn — Thu, 27 Jul 2023 07:30:55 +0000

I accidentally got a bit caught up in the design elements of our recent link in bio assignment - it's been really fun figuring out palettes, images, icons, and different backgrounds to use for a website. I hadn't realized it was that easy, or that there were so many resources that make it as simple as copy and paste (and messing around with that to change the color, font size, and so on, has been fun as well.)
I made my first link in bio type of website, so even though it's late, you can check it out here! I think it turned out pretty cute.

TIL (CodeAcademy CSS)

thomasprinn — Mon, 24 Jul 2023 01:05:57 +0000

Recently I have learned in depth about HTML and CSS - I knew a little from older platforms such as MySpace and LiveJournal's profile layout editing but it is really cool to see things come together.

With HTML I learned how to make unordered lists using:

<ul>
  <li></li>
  <li></li>
</ul>

And also to add videos.

With CSS I learned what a stylesheet is and how to style html. Adding something as simple as:

<link href="style.css" rel="stylesheet">

Changed the code entirely to show a full website instead of just text, images, and links.

I wonder if, in the future, programming languages also have clear cut styles such as CSS for HTML? Or if it is all a part of the same language?

TIL about Codespaces....

thomasprinn — Wed, 19 Jul 2023 10:02:21 +0000

I'm new to using GitHub and was able to learn something new, using codespaces. I didn't realize the site had more than just spaces to keep track of code and updates for apps.