RMU Round 2: What I learned
Note: This is the third of several posts about the philosophical and technical learnings from my Ruby Mendicant University Web Development course:
Part 1: About the course & what it was like
Part 2: A first-timer’s process of styling a site
Part 3: What I learned from the course
While the previous post was about the tools I learned to use, this post is more about my successes, my failures, and the philosophical things I’ve picked up in this session.
My successes & failures:
Styled website WIN.
While I wouldn’t say I could jump in and whip up raw CSS from scratch, with the toolkits provided within Compass, Sass, and Blueprint, I can kick out a decent web stylesheet pretty quickly and without a lot of fuss. Most of the intimidation I felt about CSS was groundless, though it can still be punishing at times.
Web Fonts FAIL.
I tried several things, but couldn’t figure out how to replace my default font (Helvetica) with a font using Google Font Directory. Web fonts became a fight that I’d just have to have another day.
Overlapping styles FAIL.
One thing Compass lets you do is cleanly separate your stylesheet partials on a page-by-page basis, which seems to be how Jordan does his. I opted instead to create partials on a per-type basis (one for forms, etc.), and this bit me badly later.
I altered the styling of my form partial for an entry form, only to go back through my app just as I thought I’d finished to discover I had completely broken my file submission form.
This added lots of extra work when I felt utterly done with the project, and actually led to my epic Git FAIL.
Git FAIL.
This was the second major time I severely frustrated myself with my lack of Git knowledge. I didn’t realize git -rm actually deletes a file, rather than a reference to a file, and I did a git revert to before I’d fixed a bunch of broken stuff.
In the end, I wound up swearing at my computer a lot and ultimately re-doing a lot of work.
At my next convenience, I’m going to go through Jim Weirich’s Git Immersion, it’s an open tab in Chrome right now, waiting for me to learn how to suck less at Git.
Learning jQuery FAIL.
I had planned on learning jQuery as a part of this course, and it just didn’t happen. I watched a few screencasts and read up a bit, but didn’t find occasion to even dip my toe in the jQuery pool.
GeoKit WIN.
GeoKit is just awesome. It’s one of the nicest, simplest, and most useful web API tools I’ve used so far.
Google Maps FAIL.
I had assumed that someone would have written a nice Ruby API for Google Maps. The answer is “no, go learn Javascript and do it yourself.”
To embed a map, you have to stuff a lot of Google-specific code in your <head>, which doesn’t play nice with the concept of a layout page. It really doesn’t play nice with Haml, so it was back to ERB for me.
Even though I could look up an address and make a map display, wiring them together required a lot of work from Jordan to fix my mistakes.
On confidence:
This was a big confidence booster for me. The only thing standing between me and getting a website done is making the time to do it. If you want something, just do it.
On pacing:
The September session taught me that when you have 3 projects to accomplish, don’t wait until you’ve finished Project 2 to move on to Project 3. Start planting the seeds for all your projects early on, so that you’re not rushed to do 100% of anything in the last couple of days.
Or it *should* have taught me that. Instead, I tried to accomplish my projects serially, spending a few days on Project 1, then more than 2 weeks on Project 2, and less than 48 hours on Project 3. Needless to say, Project 3 was a bust.
On sleep:
Toward the end, I was working until at least 2 or 3 AM every day trying to get my app styled, and sleeping an average of 4 hours a night. Greg told me to ease up, that RMU isn’t meant to upset someone’s life balance. He was right that I was pushing myself too hard, as I have a tendency to fixate on a goal and not let up until I’ve finished, even when that isn’t the wisest course of action.
However, I like the idea of “excess, in moderation”. I pushed it really hard, but not so hard that I’m burned out from further work. Maybe in another 6 months or so, I’ll do another sprint where I immerse myself in learning some new thing or breaking some perceived barrier.
If I could go back and change things, I’d probably have scaled back my ambitions somewhat and pushed the average up to 5 or 6 hours a night. I think people were starting to notice that I was cranky.
“No heroes”
Greg added that RMU isn’t about elevating heroes. I hope my crazed ambition is not perceived as any kind of heroics, because RMU is a pretty personal journey for each student. There is no Honor Roll, there are no gold stars, and there’s no valedictorian. It’s not for one person to try to set a high score. I was striving for a very personal goal, to conquer my hesitance to design a website, and I feel like I (barely) achieved it.
Finally, thanks
Lastly, I want to reiterate my gratitude to Greg for running RMU and to Jordan for his inordinate amount of work in helping me achieve my goal for the session. I still have a long way to go before I’m a “real Rubyist” or a “real web developer”, but I’m much closer than when I got involved in RMU.
