A Ruby Newbie

On the 3rd July 2017, I switched on my laptop, completely oblivious to what was about to come. Almost four weeks, several litres of coffee and a Codecademy course later, I am in love with Ruby.

Shen Sat
Shen Sat
Jul 27, 2017 · 3 min read

It started with a need: I’m a novice pixel artist, and I wanted a way to collect pixel art posts on Twitter that had received more than 500 likes. I essentially wanted to create my own gallery of the best pixel art available.

I decided the best way to do this would be to make an app; I’d dabbled in programming before (C# in Unity) so coding an app felt like a logical choice. I was also up for a challenge — can I make an app from scratch?

Google searches seemed to point to Ruby as the way to communicate with Twitter, so I first signed up to a free Codecademy course for Ruby on Rails. After a couple of lessons, it didn’t seem to be what I needed— it didn’t provide me with the fundamentals. After browsing Codecademy a little more, I signed up to the Learn Ruby course.

Ah, this was more like it! Learn Ruby started right from the basics: I was copying lines of code at first, to understand how they work, and then building on that knowledge to try out my own code. It very gently built my confidence up. Gamification features, like building up ‘streaks’ (total days spent coding) and earning ‘badges’ (completing lessons) kept me super motivated.

Combo count 10!

In search of places to code uninterrupted, I visited my local public libraries, something I hadn’t done since my A-levels. Dalston library is so far my favourite coding spot — free work spaces with plug points and wifi :) As a result of being in more libraries, I’ve started reading comics again: a happy side-effect!

After a while I started feeling like a coding gangsta. I wanted to test myself further. Within the ‘external resources’ section of the Learn Ruby course, I found challenges to build basic games using Ruby. Wicked! I love video games and I now loved Ruby, so I took on the first challenge and built my first program in Ruby — a virtual orange tree garden. (To-do: learn to use Github, so I can collect projects like this in one place).

I’ve now completed the Learn Ruby course. It’s been so much fun that I’m now looking at becoming a developer —something I’d never even dreamt about a month ago. I’ll need to make my own projects and create a portfolio — building programs I need or am naturally interested in (like my pixel art app idea) will be key in maintaining motivation. Next stop: Ruby on Rails (pun intended)!

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