My Adventures into the Desolate Wasteland of Server-Side Programming
If you hadn’t noticed, I haven’t posted in some time. That’s because I made the leap into server-side programming. And it has not been easy!
Once you jump into Server-Side programming with Thinkful, you’re met with tons of new terminology, ways of thinking, and tools. I’m still not exactly sure how to set up the dev environment, and what all the tools do, but I’m hoping that comes with experience.
Specifically, I’m currently working on creating a CRUD app that uses two different database collections that should be able to “talk” to each other in order to get information. In this case, it’s a “blog” app with authors and blogposts collections. When someone submits a blog post, the author should come from the authors collection, while the new post goes to the blogposts collection. Everything works when you do stuff within one database, such as getting the whole collection, getting a specific post or author, adding a new author, etc. But once you create a new blogpost, which requires an author, you can no longer make any requests to the posts route. Something is breaking somewhere! This happens locally and in the mLab/Heroku deployment. I’ve even had to look at Thinkful’s solution code, but couldn’t find anything I missed in there.
My project is up on GitHub. If anyone that reads this gets bored and has a look at it, let me know if you figure it out.
“You should read this…”
Sure, when do I have time for that? I really wish I could dedicate my entire life to learning to code… When someone suggests a book I should read — code-related or not — or a Netflix show I should watch, or a trail a should hike, I feel a sort of angst. It feels like something else I simply don’t have time for, and don’t understand how they have time for it.
I’m a fairly organized person, and I need no external motivators to get things done. But I’m also very busy. Having a kiddo, another full-time job, a spouse, and two dogs is not exactly without maintenance.
This month, we’ve been training our new pup. Good thing she’s smart as a whip, so it doesn’t take as long as it normally would.
It’s also time to start getting ready for the next school year. We need to choose extracurricular activities and sign up for them, which means lots of research, talking with our kid about them and gauging her interests, and then managing the state-funded website. It’s also summertime, so we have to manage summer camps. Currently, we owe one of them money — not because we don’t have the money, but because we don’t have the time to go to the post office to get a money order (we have an online-only bank).
My wife’s grandmother came into town this last week as well, so we spent an evening with her. The week before that, I had a work fund raising party that I had to help plan and execute.
I’m definitely not complaining. I’m very fortunate and in a privileged position to be able to afford to put in the money and the time to pursue this. I have a supportive partner and child, a job that allows me a bit of flexibility, etc.
In a couple of years, I’ll look back on this and wonder how I ever could have done it without the system I have in place right now. And then I’ll realize that many, many, many single parents have done the same, and more! Or folks without the financial means to even get started. Or those who have been told so many times by people or society that they’re not worth it or cannot do something, and therefore cannot even try.
