“Alice: How long is forever? White Rabbit: Sometimes, just one second.”
Makers Academy is nearly over — just two weeks to go!
I haven’t written for a while, because I AM EXHAUSTED. And this is going to be a short article too because I need to get back to my Meteor tutorial.
So what have we been up to?
Week 9 — Projects week
My team and I created a pretty good Facebook clone called “CatHub - The antisocial network”, using Rails and Ajax. You can friend other cats, create posts, and purr or hiss at, or comment on your friends’ posts.
That was a surprisingly frustrating week. I thought we’d fly through it given our (whole week’s) Rails experience, but actually we still got tripped up by a couple of things, notably creating ‘Friendships’. Turns out this isn’t quite so straightforward because they are a many-t0-many relationship where both sides of the join table are the User object (sorry for all this geek speak). Anyway, thanks to some video tutorials on self-referential associations, we managed to get it working in the end (WIN!)
I think it looks pretty good! Also, we basically recreated Facebook in a week, so let’s not be too hard on ourselves.
Week 10 — Technical tests
The week just gone was all about individual technical tests (to help us prepare for interviews), which varied from setting up a database server, to refactoring code (the famous Gilded Rose kata), to writing new code for a bank or a till.
We also had quite a few careers talks. The careers team at Makers Academy are extraordinary, so even if — like me — you’re not looking for a job post-Makers, the tips are incredibly handy.
I’ll be honest, I didn’t do all of the technical tests, because I needed a break and I’m not likely to be given a test any time soon, so I let myself relax a little. This was glorious. I even managed to get a few jobs in the flat done, like putting up shelves / hooks / hanging pictures etc (well, I arranged for someone else to do it), but these little things make a difference to your life!
I still managed to stay up late most nights doing kata on Codewars though (such an idiot!) and managed to get my score (honour) up to 185, so I’m feeling pretty chuffed with that. Learnt some new Ruby methods too, which is always a bonus.
What’s next?
It’s FINAL PROJECT time! We’ve just been allocated our teams (and mine is looking mighty fine), so from tomorrow morning, away we go. This is why I’ve been looking up Meteor — a JavaScript framework which looks AMAZING. I can’t wait to tell you how it all goes.
I can’t believe we only have two weeks left. I’m sad (this has been amazing), scared (how will I continue alone?) and excited (to get back to work, to see my colleagues, to be PAID again — during this course, our oven has blown up and now our boiler too — sob!)
If you fancy it, you can tune into our graduation on Friday 16th December where we’ll be demonstrating what we’ve built. Wish us luck!
Thanks for reading!
Frances x
