Building

So, yesterday’s challenges were : Build apps. In the morning, we had to finish the Craigslist one that we started the day before, and in the afternoon, we had to make a non-authenticated blog.

The teachers have to change a lot from last phase 2 program. We are different, and our phase 1 was so different than previous cohorts’ than in the end, we don’t code like our big brothers and sisters at all. While some of the previous cohorts (Thanks to their program/material ) tended to focus a lot on speed, and quantity, we tend to spend a ton of time on specific challenges, to master them to the end. While some would probably go for the “Quantity of knowledge”, we are going for “Mastery”. So in the end, while previous cohorts finished 10 challenges by the end of day 3, we finished only 4 but we did learn just as much and mastered a lot of things that previous people did not know about. An example would be Rspec testing. We literally spent all of yesterday testing…

Anyway, at the end we finished one app, with Johnny : Anonymous Blog. It is not beautiful, not responsive, nothing like that, but the idea was not to make beautiful things, but to make a functional blog system that allows you to have posts that can have tags, and tags that can have many posts, with the corresponding pages.

We are about to finish Craigslist so I’ll show you that right after.

Testing

We tested! For 2 days!

In the beginning, we just started to assert that things we wanted were equal. If we call “5 + 5”, we ask for it to be equal. That was phase 1.

Then we started playing with some more tests, witnessing teachers/talking about re making Rspec (The testing suite for testing in ruby. Think about it as a toolbox with a LOT of tools).

Now in Phase 2, we have Rspec, we have other tools, and we need that. The syntax is easy, very close to english. For example :

expect(5+5).to be 10

And so the hardest part was : figuring out how ENGLISH it was. Is it “.to”? Is it “ to”? Do I want to test if “5+5 =10” is true? or if “5+5” is 10?

That, guys, is what we spent two days working on. We figured out a lot (and for future reference for students : You should not use should! but expect is cool and Shoulda is your best friend if you’re testing Sinatra or Rails… Anything with ActiveRecord, even if it needs should and not expect), but it did take a lot of time.

Now, I feel like I know much more about things like one a quote from one of my favorite books : “You don’t have to test everything to destruction just to see if you made it right.”, Neil Gaiman, Good Omens. Testing is good, but can be time devouring if not done right.

But anyway, let’s not talk about that more, there is always much to write and read about that, but there are places and times to do so!

Deception

Yesterday I was disappointed by Interflora. If you don’t know that brand, it’s a flower selling service that is offered in France. It is a chain, you hear a lot about it, and so I thought I would use it when I needed that kind of service.

Yesterday was my fiancee and I’s 6th anniversary. I can’t be with her (Obviously…), so instead, I planned on making the biggest bouquet I could find delivered at her house when she would be coming home on this day. That was a long time plan, I kept the exact money I needed on my french bank account, I did some research to find how to get flowers delivered, and talked to a lot of people about that to never ever forget.

Then, a few days ago when I got the confirmation that I had the money I needed to do so (last week), I took the biggest chain I could find, for safety, I took the biggest bouquet I could find, and make it delivered at 4PM at her house, right after she comes back home from work.

Yesterday, when she woke up, I did not even send her a text. She was, of course, disappointed, but I was planning on that (and am very bad with time differences sometimes)! She thought I had forgotten that fateful day! But then she would be so happy when she would get back home from a long and hard day and find these flowers!

But then… No flower was delivered. None. I checked the time, checked in with her to see if she had them, check the site to be sure they were delivered, and the site even told me “The flower delivery guy has the order”, which eventually turned to “Your flowers have been delivered”… But none got to her house. So I had to explain everything, my plan fell apart, and today she called them to check about the order and… Guess what? … Apparently the girl on the phone told her the delivery guy never got the order.

So in short : I planned, I payed, went for safety over better shops, and in the end I feel just like an ass that did not do anything for our 6th anniversary, but just a couple of texts saying that I love and miss her.

I am so sorry, Thuy, I am very unhappy about that, and I will never stress that enough: I WILL NEVER USE INTERFLORA AGAIN IN MY LIFE

Time to go back to coding now, see you tomorrow ;)