MacAdie Web Blog

This chapter starts out with arrays (square brackets) and hashes (curly braces), which are important to know. It says that blocks when combined with collections are good iterators. The elements in arrays and hashes can be any type. Using different methods, arrays can be different data structures: sets, queues, dequeues, FIFO queues, instead of using [...]

This chapter was pretty easy. Mostly about objects and variables. So what is an attribute? It seems like it is another name for an instance variable. They start with an “at” symbol. I am still not too clear what a symbol is. I did not pay too much attention to the part on protected methods. [...]

Here are some notes on Chapter 2 of the Pickaxe book.   Single quoted strings take less processing, no interpolation Return value of a method is the last statement, so you may not always want/need to put a “return” statement in there. Local variables, method parameters and method names all start with lower case or [...]

I have finished the first chapter of the Pickaxe book. The first chapter was no big deal for me. It was about getting and installing Ruby and a few basic commands. I have used rvm to install Ruby on my Ubuntu laptop, and Rails Installer to install Ruby and Rails on my Windows laptop.

One of my plans outside of Code Academy is to go through the Ruby “Pickaxe Book” by Dave Thomas. Someone gave me a copy of the edition for Ruby 1.9. I will write a short post about each chapter as I finish them. Image from Wikipedia  

I have been through my second week at Code Academy. We started using Rails and some of the Rails commands. So far it seems pretty nice. It is a lot easier than the Java frameworks I have worked with. I went to a lecture on  HTML5/CSS by Shay Howe. I may not make to every [...]

I have decided to learn other technologies during my job search. I applied to Code Academy here in Chicago. It is a 12-week program that teaches Ruby on Rails and entrepreneurship. I am also interested in Clojure and Android, but I decided that I needed to sign up for some training to give myself some [...]

I am still going through the Rails Tutorial. I am starting to have some issues with Ruby. It seems like there are methods in files that just float in space and land in your class. For example, in the tutorial we make a class that inherits from ActiveRecord:: Base. It uses a method called “validates”, [...]

I am making some progress with the Rails Tutorial. I installed Ruby with RVM. RVM added one of my accounts to the “rvm” group, but not my main account. So I added that and for the most part things have been good. I was having some issues installing the heroku gem. I kept getting permissions [...]

I am still going through the Rails 3 Tutorial by Michael Hartl. I am not implementing the examples as I go through it; I am reading it on the CTA as I go to and from work. I will implement them when I am done. I am able to follow most of it. I have [...]