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Day 28 of MakerSquare. The day started with a rundown of the schedule and structure of the next week and an impromptu MakerStory from Osei, our new instructor. He previously did a seminar for us on debugging JavaScript in the browser console & was really energetic about it. So, looking forward to seeing what else he has in store for us. Front-end: Lordy, my JavaScript got rusty over the break. Luckily, we had some WD-40 in the form of another review before learning more about the presenters in riot.js. The title of this post came from Gilbert, as he questioned us on how functions are called & the dreamspace they manifest. ...

Day 27 of MakerSquare. Friday is Tie Day. Analog morning: we got a quick lesson on working with clients [read: ask good questions] & how to translate their ideas into specs, which we can use to determine what sort of product to build and how to build it. Then, Casey put on a ten-gallon hat and turned into Mr. Gus Chiggins, Idea Man. Mr. Chiggins asked us to build a web app he dubbed “Weightable” which will allow users to sign up, set weight goals, and start tracking their weight daily. Their friends can see their progress and give them encouragement along the way. We then worked in groups to put together the client spec and clarify what he said he wanted. ...

Day 26 of MakerSquare. Started the day with an update from the career services duo. We got some pointers on how to get our online selves together. We were also reminded that even though we’re here at MKS to eventually get jobs in development, we need to learn to be better developers first. Moral of the story: code. Front-end: using presenters in riot.js to perform actions for our webpage, all illustrated with incredibly un-fierce puppies. We did a lot of reading code and practiced verbalizing what was going on with it. ...

Day 25 at MakerSquare. Front-end: started mucking around with MVP - model, views, presenters - with our host of JS libraries. Conceptually, it seems similar to what we’ve seen in Rails. I think the next step to take will be getting a better understanding of the file structure and where to store what code. Back-end: sending emails with Rails Action Mailer. It was interesting to see how this system used the MCV style of Rails to incorporate with the rest of the application. Also, there’s something really awesome about reaching into the world from one of our applications and interacting with some aspect of it. ...

Day 24 of MakerSquare. Front-end: closure in JavaScript will, ironically, open many doors and even more questions. More concept review to really nail down the basics of JavaScript. The language is so patchy and quirky that it’d be easy to disparage it for those properties [guilty!]. But, really, it’s probably a matter of becoming more familiar with its strengths and peculiarities. At this point, there’s only one course of action and it involves finally getting a library card. ...

Day 23 of MakerSquare. The day started with two short presentations from possible clients for our final project. Will from Million Mile Month and RC from Shop141. What was interesting about both of these projects is that they’re both focused on improving lives. The code for these projects wouldn’t just be about getting more users or for another social network hoping to topple Facebook [which will happen one day, but not today], but to make tangible differences in people’s day-to-day lives, differences that can have many positive consequences down the road. I’m looking forward to what comes out of these projects. ...

Day 22 of MakerSquare. Friday is Tie Day. Project/catch up day. In addition to working more with riot.js, I built a video playlist manager in Javascript. It’s similar in style and functionality to what we had earlier built with Rails. I’m curious about the advantages and disadvantages of using JS versus Rails for web applications. I imagine that considerations of scale and functionality may be factors. Didn’t get into much Rails work today but, wow, I watched a lot of the new videos from Ruby Conf 2013. Key takeaways from those: leave cryptography to the experts; I’ll better understand garbage collection in the future; there’s a wrapper for git for users of Github [conveniently called hub]; running Ruby on robots looks both easy and fun; and programs like MKS rule. ...

Day 20 of MakerSquare. Frontend: Inception references to describe variable scope! Yes! Got my first look at riot.js, which deserves a closer & more in-depth look. Secret for the day: we’ve always been in the window object in JavaScript. Backend: More work with associations and references. Finagled some Haml and even got it to [eventually] do what I want. Learned a few tricks, like reload! in the Rails console to process any changes. ...

Day 19 of MakerSquare. Frontend: We started with a much-needed refresher in Javascript. After Gilbert had us all repeat “‘this’ points to the object calling the function” not once, but twice, I decided to write it down. It could be important. </understatement> As an aside, will the next generation understand jokes referencing closing HTML tags after we all start using Haml and other templating engines in the Future? Anyway, we broke for lunch before getting into `for` loops. Met up with a friend of mine who wants to develop a game to teach kids programming concepts. Luckily, I could follow along with his idea and even understood the funny stories he told about his CS undergrad experiences in the lab. At the very least, I’ll be a much better guest at cocktail parties after this program is over. ...

Day 18 of MakerSquare. All sorts of things going on today, with a half-hour delay due to the weather. Practiced using Git in new ways to collaborate in preparation for the hackathon. In the afternoon, we used YouTube’s API to populate fields in our MyTube web application just based on the video’s ID. And if that wasn’t enough, we watched this video on the projector. Instead of starting to wind down at 4 pm today, we instead started our first hackathon. My group, Team CEE Low [it’s an acronym thing], is working on Text-spiration, a service from which people receive inspirational text messages daily. Users will be able to select from a category of messages and a time of day to receive said message.Everything on the backend seemed cut-and-dry, but after we got to work following dinner, things didn’t look so clear. It probably won’t be easy, but I’m looking forward to doing what I signed up for: building stuff. ...