From Chef to Software Engineer

Becoming Friends with Errors

Well it has now been 8 weeks since this journey has started, and let me tell you something it hasn’t gotten any easier. I am ok with that, everything that is worth it in life is never easy. The hard part is just trying to retain everything like you are drinking from a fire hydrant. I know if I can get a good base of fundamentals that I will learn more at my first place of employment. With that being said this last project we used Sinatra to build our first app using MVC (Model, View, Controller) to keep the code organized. I built a golf application that allows users to look at courses and add them, along with being able to create a profile. During this project I received so many errors while I was trying to connect my routes. A huge part was an error on my part. I added all the routes in each of my controllers without testing each one. Which was one thing that I didn’t think about doing. This was what soon led me to what I called my spiderweb of routes. I ended up having to go through each route that I created and use pry to see which ones I needed and which ones I didn’t.

Here is one thing that I advise any one who is just starting out make sure you do your pre work. Map everything out, while you do pseudo code for methods to see how you want to write it. Do the same thing with your routes, except draw a diagram, and don’t fill out your controllers with get and post routes thinking you will need it for each controller. Map it out add your routes as you work. I had to start with my home page and start working my way checking each one that was working the way I wanted it to. If I would of done this at the beginning I would of saved myself at least 2 days of staring at errors and trying to make sure each route had a purpose.

There is still a lot to learn being new to this industry, I can tell you one thing though. I enjoy most days but there are days that it is just stressful and especially when things don’t go the way you would like, but still I look forward to finishing school and getting out to continue growing as a developer.