My first web app
My First App #
So after many trials and tribulations, I have finally actually started looking
into Rails more seriously. I first thought about learning web development a
couple years ago, and naturally just got distracted and was too busy to
continue. (Or some sort of excuse along those lines) But now that I'm done
school and looking for work, I've come across many job postings for web
developers. I've always been up to date with web technologies, but never
actually implemented and looked under the hood of them. With all these coding
bootcamps popping up everywhere, I figured I already had enough technical
chops to pick up learning Rails on my own.
Choosing a Tutorial #
I decided to go with the Hartl tutorial, it seemed to contain enough depth for
me, and good coverage. What I'ved learned is that the best way for me to learn
is to go through an example, and then deconstruct it to figure out how it
works. Essentially working backwards from a good example, and then piecing it
back together. So after going through the Hartl tutorial, I grabbed a repo off
an app and worked my way through it. Sometimes it's fun to take a more complex
project and take some time to work through it. In the end, what I've learned
so far is that web development is very involved, and there's a lot of hocus
pocus going on behind the scenes. Rails does a ton of magic that makes
everything work together, but this also means that you might run into errors
that are much harder to figure out.
Vancouver Bike Racks #
The app that I deployed was adjusted from a fire hydrant app for people to
adopt a hydrant to clean it out during the winter. Fortunately that isn't a
problem for the city of Vancouver so I decided to change it up. When I was
looking at the hydrant data, it was all very boring and unexciting since the
streets are laid out in a grid, it was very easy to predict where hydrants are
placed. Instead I decided to show the location of bike racks in Vancouver, and
allow people to adopt a bike rack to keep clean. Seemed appropriate.