Children play "Rock Paper Scissors" in jest, but web developers build "Rock Paper Scissors" apps in earnest. (To paraphrase Bion.)
It's been real interesting to go from some of our smaller, more focused projects--projects where we learned and employed one new technology or section of technology--to something like a full project. Because, even though "Rock Paper Scissors" is a pretty simple game, with a high requirement of two hands, as an app, there's a lot of little pieces.
You'll need HTML and CSS to display the page, with some sort of web app technology, like Sinatra, to host the server and pass info from your front-end to your back-end. Throw in a little Javascript and jQuery to make the site interactive, and you've already gone beyond the technology I had when I made my first website at Geocities. Then, on the back-end, you have Ruby handling the logic and ActiveRecord handling the database to keep track of how players are doing.
Also, at some point you have to grab some silly pictures of rocks, paper, and scissors; or come up with some weird angle to make your Rock-Paper-Scissors game stand-out. (My favorite theme so far is pirates.)
And you have to do all of that before the big, cohort-wide ping pong tournament on Friday. Because no matter how much your skills have improved in terms of HTML, CSS, Javascript, and Ruby, the real judge of a developing developer is ping pong.
Until next week, when we move into our new office. Then the only skills that matter will be coding skills.
And also Super Smash Bros. on the N64.
No comments:
Post a Comment