Rory's Journey

Growing up I avoided the command line at all costs. I got my first computer when I was around 9 years old. It came with Windows 95, so I grew up during the GUI era as most of my friends did.

When Ubuntu was the "in-thing" a few loved it, they would be in the command line all day, all night. Doing simple "one-click" actions by typing 3-4 prompts. I always found this strange.

When the introduction of Rails & Git, the dreaded command line had to be used [oh no!].

Not sure if was because I actually saw everyone else using command line with these services I wanted to learn so I kept at it.

Learning Git involves a bit of a learning curve I'm come across one site that should help

Awesome Cool Git Guide

Similar to my last tip on bash alias, there's a few of Joey P commands

alias ad='git add'

alias pl='git pull'

alias ph='git push'

alias cm='git commit -a -m'

alias sl='git status -uall'

alias ct='git checkout'

I never considered myself an expert with it comes to programming or general Computers. Sure when I'm around family members and colleagues the word comes up. But to my other "techie" friend nope not at all. 

However I came across a blog post or was it a quote that urge persons to blog about whatever they feel will be benefical to someone else.

Think about it, how many times have a google search lead to a blog of a "average developer" who had the same problem as you did. His fix also was your fix.

With that said, Rory Tip's is born. (Though I had a previous tip here)

I came across this when Chris advised I check out his dotFiles.

I came across "alias", which basically creates a shortcut in your terminal.

When I open my terminal, I have to then cd 2/3 times to the ruby project I'm working in then start the server. Then open a new terminal cd 2/3 again then start the Rails Console. It's very annoying and mightly unproductive.

I thought maybe I can use "alias" to assit;

alias cdf='cd Code/Ruby/Filmbet'

With only three characters I jump in the project that I'm working with.

How about 

alias cdf='cd Code/Ruby/Filmbet && rails s '

I start the server too :)

To do this I had to make the change in my .bash_profile file.

I always mixup, is it vim ~/. or vim ~./, especailly in typing it normally comes out wrong.

So I did  

alias bashp='vim ~/.bash_profile'

To implement, use VIM or another text edit to access or create your bash_profile . bashrc.

It's hidden so I recommend using the terminal and VIM.

 vim ~/.bash_profile

Life is tough. Self doubt just one of the many emotions that we experience.

For the past couple days, I've been in a "coding" rot. Haven't been inspired to work on projects.

Tonight while half watching Person of Interest (not a great show by any means), I decided to check out Chris's twitter stream, he really seems to be doing good things online; writing/coding/helping others. I came across @sstephenson took a look at this profile the first thing I noticed was "Programmer at 37signals" I must admit that caught my eye.

Decided to check out his blog (as I said to myself "how's good does someone has to be to work at 37signals") I quickly got my answer. 

The first thing that I noticed on his website "Some tools I’ve created:Prototype JavaScript framework".That's huge, Prototype in my opinion is the jQuery of yesteryear. I was like "Oh okay, well that makes sense". Then I was like "Well, what chance do I have?" 

I decided to take a break from the usual ( VT and FB) work. I came across Jeff Ways The Intro to Rails Screencast I Wish I Had. 

Even though I've been "Riding the Rails" for around 9 months, I felt there was alot I didn't know. So when I came across Jeff's no scaffolding tutorial which includes TTD (something I always avoided) I decided to talk a stab at it.

I came across my first rSpec error and was pretty much stuck for 2 days.

Jeff instructs us to simply restart guard - Didn't work for me.

Then Stackoverflow came to the rescue

I simply had to run

I started working on VacayTracker (VT) back in March; it has been a long and hard journey. Learning Rails while trying to build a product wasn't easy. A friend I know did it quite well, so that motivated me to give it a go. 

(Fast forward through trail and tribulations learning whilst Rails), I had finally reached my MVP of VT it came after months and months of development. Late nights and early morning coding, dry spells and my favorite not one but many "Trough of Sorrows" but I did it. 

I quickly sent an email to my primary advisor to set up a meeting for her to take a look on the product and give me feedback. I of course was very nervous, didn't know what to expect. Even though I've been talking to a few persons to validate the market and come up with my initial feature set, not many persons had actually used the product.

Any who we both sat down, of course my localhost started to give problems during the start of the demo. We went through the product feature by feature. She then asked "How does a employee request a vacation?", "What about Pro-rate?" and so on. Some features I had not put in as I didn't view the product being used that way. As of now, I'm sticking to it. ( Until I launch and I get demand for it, then probably I'll reconsider). For the majority of questions/features request from her, they were damn well great. Things that never came to me, things that as a developer I didn't quite see/notice but coming from a end-user it was a no-brainer to have.

I got out my notebook and jotted down each. In the end I came to 15 improvements that I needed.

After reaching home I won't lie I was down. "So I still haven't reached MVP?!" I thought to myself. I was about to do what I normally do whenever I reach a dry spell (can't fix a damn rails error or thinking to myself VT won't make any money). It's time to create a new sexy social rails app. It's the easy way out. Something came to me though, it's time for me to deliver. That won't be by launching a simple application that I make in a couple hours, but by launching my first product. 

Programming is something I want to do as a career (hopefully one day in the Valley). From checking out Job Posts most companies are looking for full web stack developers. Developers who have built products from start to finish, I'm assuming that it would be a plus if you have paying users :)

Hoping to launch VacayTracker - end of September. 

Looking for a simple sexy anti-Excel approach to Employee Tracking signup for Early Access here 

Update:

Fixed it!!

Trying to fix this damn bug.
#2yearplan

"The best job stability you can have is constantly developing and evolving your skills with the latest and greatest technologies." Jay Rob of TechZing Live