Thursday, July 11, 2013

Day 260 = Debugging

Went to Arlington Ruby Tonight (technically yesterday) and heard some great talks on using Pry and debugging in general.

I learned about the "cardboard programmer" to help you debug, which I had never heard of before. Basically, talk to someone or something about what you are trying to accomplish with your code and while you're talking through your code you will have a "lightbulb" moment and realize what the bug is.

I know a little about Pry now and use it some, just not at a high level, just in place of IRB. The talk by @jdpagano on Debugging was excellent. Learned how to weed through a stack trace error MUCH more efficiently and not to be intimidated by them. HINT: Look for the word 'app' in the stack trace error. More than likely that's a place to try and find your bug.

Worked with Eric from Arlington Ruby (who's last name has escaped me or else I would mention it ) tonight on fixing some Css issues I was having. The man is a Css wizard, he fixed and explained what was going on in the code and showed me how to make my code better. Really enjoyed working with him, and I learned a lot :-)

I haven't forgotten about Burrito To Code+Guille Carlos has been swamped with a big upcoming release at the startup he works at, next week we'll get a date set in stone for our first class. The interest and sign ups have been amazing!

I'm giving the main talk at this Month's Nova Ruby meetup. Totally shocked how many people have already signed up:  Josh's Talk  and it's still a week away, NOW I'm getting nervous!

Tomorrow I'm going to the D.C. Ruby group for the first time, totally excited, can't wait! I'll let you know how it goes.

Still working on Ruby for the time being, along with some other things. Loving the journey! -Josh