Week 7
We're finishing up week 7 of Iron Yard.We've crossed a bridge into the land of "Hey, you should start to see how this all is beginning to make sense"
...and -what the hell?!- it kinda IS.
Granted, there are still moments of "Wait...what the hell do I do now?..." but they're becoming less and less frequent, and I'm beginning to learn the patterns of where to go and what to look for. Both in my own review of 'what did I just do' and 'where would I find that answer...'
In class we're creating and utilizing what we've covered in weeks past with JavaScript and Ajax to get our user-driven websites to reload with the proper information without a full-page refresh. The prompt is to build something similar to giphy.com. This is a bit more the UI stuff I'm eager to learn. I know I'm in a course for back-end, but there are times I want to break out my design-minded side to have a bit of creativity in my work. I just keep reminding myself that I'm building skeletons for now. I can flesh them out later, but I need the structural components to work first. Everyone wants a cute kitten...but one without bones is sick and disgusting.
...I was thinking more of a meowing puddle of fur...
I'll also be building a task-managing web app over the Thanksgiving holiday. I'm hoping to get up to par with these rails app skills before we move into utilizing APIs for our applications.
On Patterns
Humans love patterns. Fact. We do.As I'm learning, nearly everything in life is a series of patterns. From the clothes on your back, to the pavement you walk on, to the food you eat. There's a pattern in all of it. There's even a word for behavioral patterns: habit.
Coding is nothing more than taking a look into the patterns of text needed to generate the information you want. Like languages. It may sound incredibly simple...but I had this odd 'Sudden Clarity Clarence' moment where it hit me: literally everything is a pattern. The key is just figuring out the pattern and then learning to manipulate it to what you want the outcome to be.
...dude...
The big(ger) patterns I've learned through this course so far:
My personal learning patterns
Basic patterns to coding
Logical problem solving patterns
And these patterns are applicable for SO much. My future in the developer world, for any major (or minor) problem that I'm thinking through, and learning, really, anything in my future endeavors.
I can recall in my second year studio for landscape architecture, Devin, a friend of mine, was hell-bent on 'breaking the mold'. He wanted so badly to go against the grain of design, as I think all young designers want - to truly design something so unique that it changes the way we think about design for the future. You want something balanced? Here's an asymmetrical design that meshes nothing together! Take that!
Devin has one of the most creative minds of my friends. But I'll combat the 2nd-year-studio version of him for a moment to say: in many (even most) cases, taking the road most travelled - is the best course for learning.
"Damnit, Steve. We didn't build that road for no f#ckin' reason."
The important corollary with this, however, is taking the next step: breaking down the patterns of what has been done into components to a point where they seem almost useless, then building them up to what your vision originally was. Many times we forget to do this. We're so caught up in the vision of what we want the end product to look like, or how we want it to function, we forget to break it down, find the patterns, and build it back up.
As I work through the coming weeks, I'll be doing as I've had to do this past week - remind myself to break it down, look at the patterns and learn what works with what, then build it back up to where I want it to go.
On a personal note:
This course is effecting my life in so many way. For the positive, I should add - boy that statement could sound bad, couldn't it? I've had to (re)learn so many basics about learning and myself on topics that I felt I had answers to already. This course has already been a bit life-changing for me. I genuinely wish I had these kinds of lessons in my college experience (or even earlier) - but I also doubt I would have understood the gravity of it had I gone through this any younger. Regardless, after the struggles of this week, I'm left with a feeling that I'm on the right path to learning how to be the person I want to be, for me. It's nothing more than understanding the patterns needed to get there. ...a Konami Code for real life.
Let's go kick some ass.
(Photo of enthusiasm/determination level below)
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