nodejs – WildKnitter Codes

Going Forward…

I’ve been pondering how to move forward with my blog. I know daily spleening about my ups and downs attempting to learn Java and JUnit testing are rather redundant and tedious. I may start blogging two or three times a week. If nothing else, I need extra time to finally make it through my Udemy course!

I’ve also been thinking about how to keep my JavaScript, HTML, Node.js, and CSS skills fresh. I ran into one of my fellow Code Academy classmates, and he mentioned needing to “use it or lose it.” It’s almost like a higher power was speaking directly to me. It’s interesting…our instructor has stressed the importance of having a side project, along with one’s coding at work. In fact, he explained that if you’re looking for a new job, the first thing employers want to see is what you have out on GitHub that you’re working on. I’ve asked around, though, and many developers at work have told me that there is no way in hell they ever have the spare time to do this–especially mothers with small children.

However, I think I have an idea, for something that might encompass keeping up my skills AND having fun with yarn. I’ve been googling. There are TONS of websites devoted to knitting pattern generators (knittingfool.com being one I’ve used), there don’t seem to be any crocheting pattern generators, other than for “graphgans,” which are afghans with a design or a picture on them. There are literally generators out there where you can scan in a picture of your dog and they will spit out a pattern (filet crochet, knitted, afghan crochet, single crochet, etc.) for you to make an afghan with Fido emblazoned on it. I’m thinking I could try a knitting generator, to get my feet wet; but I think I’d ultimately like to make a crochet sweater pattern generator. I’ve tried using ones for knitting, plugging in a crochet gauge instead, but the increases and decreases for crocheting are quite different, AND they’re different for different types of crochet stitches. I DO still have a domain name out there that I bought back when I did my first HTML/CSS project for class…

This could work…

Work Day 17: Back to School!

…but all the other kids are WAY ahead of me.

Our first continuing ed session with our instructor was abbreviated. He’s having computer issues, so we mainly walked high-level through the object-oriented JavaScript code he’s got out in GitHub. We’re supposed to review this, and try to run it on our machines before our next session—later on, we’ll be doing more involved work, I’m sure. It looks like I’m going to have to get Node.js loaded onto my work laptop, as we’ll be using that. I’m not sure how well that’s going to interact with the rest of the apps on my computer. I think I’m going to ask my mentor and The Alum for their thoughts. I could possibly just do all the continuing ed work on my home laptop to be on the safe side…I’m going to load a copy of his GitHub code there anyway.

We also spent a good deal of time going over how we all are doing in our new jobs. Some people are doing very well, as either a) they don’t need Java, and/or b) they have people they can shadow. I’m at a standstill, as I’m still learning Java and Gosu, which is going GLACIALLY slowly. Honestly, I’m getting the most bang for my buck from the Udemy course at home, but it’s not very fast-paced. Some people in class have had good success using the online CodeAcademy site. I’m tempted to check it out, but realistically, between Udemy, Tutorialspoint, Pluralsight (zzzz…), studying our current code, and trying to learn Gosu (and somewhere in here I have to learn Spring Batch), I think I have enough going on. If I try to add one more learning tool, I’m pretty sure my head is going to explode.

This afternoon, a good friend pointed out that I should give myself a break. If nothing else, I’ve only had a decent work laptop on which to do ANYTHING for a short time now.

I hate feeling useless, though.

Day 64: When one door closes…

…we hope my ID badge still works in the revolving door back at the office.

It’s the last day of class. I’m feeling an immense sense of gratitude. I’m sad our three months of training are over, as I’m going to miss everyone. We are all going to meet weekly for additional follow-up training for a few months, but that’s going to be over Skype, so it’s not going to quite be the same. It’s also been nice to put a lot of everyday “busy-ness” on the back burner while I focused on classwork—I got to see what was really important. There are a few things in my life that I think I’m going to let go by the wayside, as they didn’t turn out to be as important as I once thought…not the knitting group, though! Never!

I want to thank everyone for making this possible (at this point, they’re all reading my blog). I wasn’t sure, in the beginning, if I could pull this off at an age where many of my friends are retiring. The last time I coded anything was over 10 years ago, and that was mainframe reporting. Now I’m able to create functional sites with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Bootstrap, Node.js, Angular/TypeScript, MySQL, Handlebars, etc. Going forward, I’m going to learn Java. I couldn’t have done it without the Code Academy, our great instructors, and the managers that pulled it all together.

I’ve been asked if I’m going to keep up the blog. The answer to that is a resounding YES! Think about it…transitioning back to the department I left as a business analyst, and am now returning to as a developer–it’s material that’s just going to write itself.

I do hope my new laptop shows up soon…

Day 62: Achoo!

I have a cold.

It was only a matter of time. We’ve all been cooped up in a classroom in the basement of our building for three months now. Several people have been sick over the course of our bootcamp. I’m just happy I never caught whatever that one guy had that caused him to stay home due to vomiting. I’m currently chugalugging Theraflu, hoping to stave off the worst of this. I’d just as soon NOT show up at my old department/new job next Monday morning with the Bubonic Plague. It could bring down the mood…

We spent most of today doing self-study “new hire” online trainings. We’re allowed to skip over some topics we might already be familiar with…things like “How to Fill Out a Timesheet.” Other topics are a bit more relevant. This, in turn, was punctuated with guest speakers. I have to say I was especially appreciative of the IT educational resources speaker. We now have a license through the company for Pluralsight. I’ve joked before about how I don’t get much out of just watching coding videos, but I think the combination of this and W3 Schools should help. My goal, going forward, is to learn Java.

I’m also trying to figure out how to keep my JavaScript/Node.js knowledge fresh, as I’m not going to be using it for my everyday work. One thing I thought of was to perhaps finish the server we started for the final project. We only built it out far enough for our required site pages. Over the years, I’ve seen too many developer friends let their skills go stale because they got complacent in their jobs—I don’t want that to happen to me.

On a cheerier note, I’ve been in touch with my manager. He’s got someone preparing a transition plan for me—It’s my coworker who has also been through Code Academy! That should be a plus. She should have an idea of where the gaps are, and what accesses and additional training I’ll need.

I just hope I remember where I sit…

Day 60: I think I can, I think I can, I think I can…

We’re nearing the finish line for our final project, and for Code Academy as a whole. I’m pretty set on the project, except to test one more time and make sure I’ve done a run-through for the presentation tomorrow. I’m somewhat nervous about the presentation, but we’ve done these before, so it shouldn’t be too much different.

I’m feeling sad…I’ve spent the last three months with a great group of fellow students. I’m going to miss everyone! I know…I’m insane. Some of them will be working in my same office, so it won’t completely be goodbye. Speaking of offices, I’m also going to miss being in the downtown office. Granted, I know from past experience that the long commute is the seventh circle of hell in the winter, but I’m going to miss being in the middle of everything.

On a more entertaining note, I attempted to install ProsgreSQL on my home laptop (to see if I could run my site from home) and it was a fiasco. It asked for the port number, but I think I was supposed to change it to 3000. As a result, despite REINSTALLING it and specifically indicating Port 3000, the app, when opened, is still expecting the default port, and now gives big, ugly errors. I’m going to have to figure this out tomorrow.

Day 59: Fried Brains Redux…

Today was a tad uglier than yesterday. Thankfully, I didn’t feel like such an idiot, as some of our issues were communal. Everyone was having issues with their Nav Bar changing back to a “logged out” status when one clicked onto another page link. The trick was, believe it or not, to NOT do that. We ended up putting in click events for the links rather than hrefs, so that the components switched out, rather than the entire page reloading every time (which was wiping out the user authentication).

Right now, I’m struggling with the edit user page. Whenever I have issues with a page, it’s usually with any type of PUT request. I know it’s not the server, as I’ve tested that ad nauseum with Postman. If this were JavaScript and not Angular/Typescript, I’d be done by now! Not that I’m resentful…One of the other idiot things I’m struggling with is how to hide or show a DIV. With jQuery, it would be a no-brainer. One might say…I’D BE DONE BY NOW!!!

As I’m completely fried this evening, I took a break and have been knitting. I’m so brain-dead that I’ve been constantly checking the pattern, as I’m afraid of doing the wrong thing…AND several rows into this, I discovered that I did do something wrong. I forgot to put in a buttonhole! Guess who’s going to need to learn how to make an Elizabeth Zimmermann “afterthought buttonhole”?

This will have to wait until I figure out make the damned edit user page edit a damned user…preferably the correct user…

Day 58: We have liftoff!

Today was the official beginning of our final project, using our Capstone pages, our server from the last project, and Angular. Despite my misgivings, things are going well so far! I tested my server changes, after getting rid of the page renderings, and everything checked out. I’ve been doing what our instructor suggested and approaching things one step at a time. I created the client and I did the easy stuff. I copied in each component that used to be a “handlebar,” set up routing, and fired up the pages, one by one–just to make sure they appeared. They didn’t have functionality yet, of course, but they did show up! I was DYING to bring in the patterns page, too, but that’s going to be a nice-to-have, if I can get the other pages working in time. I also have a Team Details page that would be fantastic to get working by the Tuesday Noon deadline, but that one is really on the “I want a pony” wishlist…

This evening, I managed to get the code done for the Leagues and Users data. I even managed to add code to do a loop to dynamically create the Leagues list on the home page! I may have to do some googling to figure out how to bring in the Teams data, seeing as that has member data as a subset of the teams data. I’m happy with what I’ve accomplished so far, though.

Day 57: Serving It Up

This was one of those days where everything went wrong. I dropped my smoothie getting out the door, I faced horrendous traffic getting into class, and I spilled what was left of my smoothie all over myself.

And then there was Angular.

We’ve had only three days of Angular instruction, and now we’re being let loose to modify our sites to use this for our final project. We also found out today that since we are no longer using Handlebars or JavaScript for our site, we need to jettison all client-side JavaScript and handlebar pages to make way for Typescript and components. We have to get rid of any routers or controllers for former Handlebar pages in the server code. This poses a bit of an issue for me. Everything in my server was set up by—you guessed it—pages! I set up routes by pages, and under the route and controller scripts I had code for each page, with the different CRUD operations for the page under this, which in turn had service code script files. I know it sounds odd, but it worked. This afternoon, I had to reorganize it all by the files we’re using and their CRUD (pun intended). I have to admit that this is a cleaner way of doing it, but it took ages to set up. I had a few false starts, but the server finally fired up at 4:45. I still need to employ the dreaded Postman to test it tomorrow.

On a humorous note, this evening I met with my fellow IIBA members. I’m technically no longer a BA but I’m still a member of IIBA, as I’m an officer and my term isn’t up for a year and a half. I recently swapped duties with another officer, so I needed to meet with her and other people to show them all how to send out notices for chapter events and how to update the website. Overall, it went well, and I think they understood things.

When we got all done, I realized they were all staring at me.

“What?” I asked. (Was it my breath?)

“You…you…you’re beginning to…”

“Yes?”

“It’s…uncanny!”

“What?”

I couldn’t figure what they were driving at.

Finally, someone blurted it out.

“You sound like a…DEVELOPER!” They all nodded in unison.

“Yeah, it’s really weird.”

Someone else piped up, “And you actually SWORE!”

Honestly, I’m sort of proud.

Day 56: Breaking it down…

After my little adventure last night where I almost permanently hosed my server, I decided to leave well enough alone for now and just go with the pages I’ve rendered so far. If we’re going to have to rewrite pages in Angular, I’d just as soon not have too much to convert. I do want to work on eventually converting them all, so that I can practice different types of server routing…Oh my God…I really AM turning into a nerd…

Today’s deeper dive into Angular was a bit better than yesterday, although I’m still not sure HOW we’re going to pull off rewriting our pages. I’ve been reading ahead and it STILL looks confusing. I’m hoping that as we go along it will become clearer. I get the concept of breaking things (the partials and views we have now) into components, but we’re launching into another round of divding things up further into routes, components, and providers (services). We did a few of these today and I STILL have no idea how to determine what goes into which type of file.

In other more exciting news, I believe I’ve figured out how to vary my nav bar using Handlebar conditions, depending on whether a user is logged in or not. My next step is to figure out how to pull this off for users who are admins, so that other users (a.k.a. the unwashed public) aren’t privy to the admin link.

Actually, after last night’s adventure, my next step is to go to bed!

Day 55: Angular-ing for a clue…

When you google or bing the word “Angular” in a browser, you return:

“Angular is a TypeScript-based open-source web application framework…”

“Angular Cheilitis is a condition that causes red, swollen patches in the corners of your mouth…” I’ll spare you the details, except to say that, yes, this can be caused by a fungus, or as I like to call it, a “fungus amungus.”

The second definition, pertaining to festering sores, is a MUCH better descripton of my entire day attempting to understand Angular. For our final project we are going to have to convert our Handlebar pages into this format, along with our code. I’m hoping to have some sort of clue in the next few days, because right now, I have NO idea how I’m going to do this for my Capstone pages.

Speaking of my pages, I took leave of my senses this evening and attempted to have the server render yet another Capstone page–the Edit Team Details page. I’m over and above where I need to be for activating pages, but I just HAD to try one more…I’ve spent the last 3 hours of my life (that I’m never getting back again) attempting to do a PUT request that hitherto worked just FINE with the old server. I screwed everything up so badly I had to wipe out the entire folder, clone the code from my GitHub Repo again, and reinstall the npm packages.

I think I need to quit for the evening, before I break anything else…