Theme: Zen and the art of testing
I don't know what will make less sense to people reading this blog: my title or my theme. Or maybe you're a MakerSquare student and you understand it all--as well as the pain behind it.
But for my parents, here's the quick skinny: Git is a version control system that I didn't quite get before but that I'm devoted to now; and Github is a website where you can store all of the versions you've written. So, for instance, let's say you write your code and it works--great! Commit it to Github.
Then you decide to add some new function and it breaks something in your old code and you don't remember what--well, not that big a problem. Just rollback your program to the last time you committed. In short, Git and Github are great ways to experiment on things without screwing up what you've already got.
In a similar but completely different vein, rspec is also a very logistical side issue to coding: it's a way to set up a program to test your original code. Which means that, yes, now you have two chances to screw up and twice as much code to debug. But really (say the instructors) it makes a lot more sense to work with rspec rather than to test your program by copying everything over to irb.
(Oh boy, I really should link you to a dictionary site because there's lots of special words here. "Irb" is the interactive Ruby shell, where you can run Ruby right in your terminal.)
Today also involved a visit from Savrut of career services, which was very interesting and full of plans for future events: mock interviews, resume reviews, etc.
Also, he said that any tech company thinking of hiring you would find your online presence, so... Hi!
But I am running out of steam here and I still wanted to note something Nick said today that pinged my sense that coding involves a lot of strange Zen overlaps. (Or Derridean deconstruction, if that's the way you want to take it.) Today's comment (paraphrased):
"You want your code to be broad and very specific."
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