Forem: Brooke B

How to install Webpack

Brooke B — Wed, 30 Dec 2020 16:21:12 +0000

Liquid syntax error: Tag '{% raw %}' was not properly terminated with regexp: /\%\}/

Media Queries and Responsive Magic

Brooke B — Sun, 08 Nov 2020 20:55:24 +0000

I am brushing up on my CSS and currently taking a Frontend Udacity course.

It is nice to be able to go back over what we learned at Flatiron bootcamp, but also I realize, there is so much that I never knew about CSS.

Media queries are super cool!

A cardinal rule I learned about creating responsive web layouts, is to design for the smallest screen first.

A media query is a rule you can add to your CSS that changes the style of CSS according to the screen size.

For example if I want to create a layout for a small screen I can say

@media(min-width:700px){body { background-color: blue;}

Now when the screen width is greater than 700px it will change the background to blue.

In reality what media queries are useful for are changing font size, margins, and the display styles.

It is important to think about how the screen size changes what you want the user to see.

Staying Empowered During Job Search & Job Search Prep

Brooke B — Thu, 06 Aug 2020 16:59:36 +0000

I am someone who can know exactly what I should be doing and totally resist it.

I have been feeling torn between studying algorithms, applying to jobs and creating applications.

It is not easy to create structure in your life, when the bootcamp ends, or when you graduate college.

Consistency is something that creates results, however it is often a long game.

I won't be great at solving algorithms, or learning new languages and frameworks overnight, but if I practice daily for months I will strengthen my skills.

For the past week I have committed to doing algorithms on Leetcode everyday, even if it is just 2-3 new ones and 5 ones that I have already done. I also have committed to pushing code to Github everyday, but the most important thing I have added to my routine is meditation.

This is my Leetcode submissions:

I meditated everyday for 40 days and it changed my life. It was the turning point in my bootcamp, I was able to bounce back from seemingly unsolvable bugs, frustration with new material and the stress of code challenges.

When I stopped meditating, I slowly fell back into old ways of thinking. I started to doubt myself, lose motivation, lose patience with learning how to solve various algorithms.

Being a developer is an emotional rollercoaster, the actual coding is not that hard if you practice, however running into bugs that take hours or days to solve can really mess with your head if you do not have a strong mental fortitude, which I will be honest if I do not meditate I surely don't.

One last thing I will add is I keep seeing Junior developers complain about the number of rejections they get or the application process, and it is not productive. It is a downer to see negative posts on Linkedin, not to mention it is a red flag to recruiters. So stop that habit. Write in a journal, call a friend but do not ruin your professional reputation by having a quitter attitude.

Good luck with your job searches everyone! You will find the right role it is just a matter of time.

Post Bootcamp Life

Brooke B — Tue, 30 Jun 2020 21:09:49 +0000

Photo by Thomas Bennie on Unsplash

I graduated from Flatiron's coding bootcamp 2 months ago.

It has flown by, and I have been learning a lot since it ended.

It can be daunting to figure out what your next steps are once your bootcamp ends.

Photo by Max Ostrozhinskiy on Unsplash

I knew algorithms were an essential part of the interview process, so Leetcode was a must.

I also knew that being a beginner meant I could not take time off of coding or I would become rusty and forget a lot of what I had learned.

Finally, I knew it looked good to have learned more languages and frameworks after the bootcamp ended.

So, how would I figure out what to prioritize?

Not two weeks after my bootcamp ended, I met a founder of a company who was working on an application very similar to what I had in mind for my own company in the future.

I worked with him for a few weeks and in that time I learned the MERN stack, the plan was I would build his full website.

I really enjoy the MERN stack, and had I not met that founder I may not have learned MERN.

We decided to part ways and I was back on my own.

I decided Python is the industry standard for algorithms so that is what I would learn.

So I started watching tutorials and learning Python basics.

I really really really liked Ruby so Python was a nice language to dive into.

While studying Python...

I had a company reach out to me for an interview, the recruiter told me to learn Java. I then learned about Java and the differences between Java and C#.

I got an offer but they are in a hiring freeze.

I applied to another company for a frontend role. They asked me to learn React-native and build a screen for them to measure my aptitude.

Everyone's post bootcamp journey will look different. What I work on may not interest you and vice versa. What I have learned from this experience, is to always keep learning, and be open-minded. I am willing to learn just about any coding language.

There is no recipe for success after a Bootcamp, but what I can say is do not stop, do not stop learning, applying and coding.

Goodluck grads!

Find_or_create_by: ActiveRecord Ruby on Rails

Brooke B — Tue, 30 Jun 2020 20:31:58 +0000

I am working on a project that I am very excited about!

I am creating a social media platform for animals. I like to keep my project ideas silly and fun

because it is hard to learn a new skill if you are working on a project that doesn't thrill you.

I am using a Rails backend with a Javascript frontend.

My relationships in my model are set up such that A Post cannot be created without a User.

I created ease with my project by allowing a person to create both a post and a user at the same time.

When I was attempting to create a new post in my application. I ran into an error on my backend.

My post was able to create, however, I was not able to create a user, or find a user properly.

My database would attempt to create a new user record, but would then fail.

My code looked like this originally:

I am using the Find_or_create_by method. This is a method to help search for data from what you pass in, and if its record is not found in your database, will create a new record.

The first argument is the attribute name, and its value.

Find_or_create_by accepts a block of code.

In the block that starts on line 20 I am specifiying the values that I want each attribute to be set to if this user is not found in the database.

Now the database is able to create a new user in the database with all of its attributes passed in through the form where the data was entered.

I kept getting an error where the database would INSERT a row to the table, but then it would rollback transaction.

The database was very confused because I was only passing it a name attribute, and so if it could not find the user record, it was unable to create a new user in the table with only the name attribute given.

In my posts controller, I have strong params set for users. What strong params do is make sure a user can only be created with the parameters I specified.

I only want to create a new user record in my database if the name attribute that was typed into my form does not match any of the names that are currently in my database.

When I create a User on my form I am passing 6 attributes. However, the only attribute I do not want repeated is the User's name.

I rewrote my code like so:

Here, In line 19 I am still looking for the name attribute, however, I am specifying what the database should compare that name to. It should be compared to the name attribute that gets entered into my form.

Now the database is able to create an entire User, with all of its params passed in as well as look for the name attribute in the entire object.

I am excited about the find_or_create_by method. I have built 2 javascript frontend with rails backend projects.

I am constantly searching through my database, and now there is an easier way to accomplish this task.

Hope you enjoyed this!