- Pry
- I am FINALLY LEARNING HOW TO USE PRY! This is such a big deal and I couldn't be more thrilled. I was coding blind beforehand (or at least with a lot of work having to enter manually in a terminal irb session) and I was not sure if the code I was writing was any good or not. To be able to utilize both Pry and Rspec is a game changer. Whew, I needed this.
- Rspec
- Same comment as above in conjunction with pry. Added to this, I'm beginning to understand the conventions of TDD and while it does take a little longer to think and write out, it is so helpful to test the code when I have laid out what I'm expecting.
- Stack Overflow
- I was having a really difficult time understanding how the hash integrated with this project and how to call a certain key in an instance variable. I was able to utilize the question of someone else on Stack Overflow to understand better how this worked and implement it into my own code.
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This project will fix broken code from previous developers and write following code to link information between vehicles and dmv's to get cars registered with all requirements met.
1. Describe the steps you took to dig in to this code base. What was your process? If you don’t feel you had a process, define one that you might like to try next time.
- This time I was advised to take a look at the interaction pattern before starting at step one so as to get a better overview as to what will be happening. Starting this project, I only looked through iteration one because I figured iteration two would be out of my league but I'll be able to hit that tomorrow!
- Beginning my spec test first was helpful to start with small things and not get overwhelmed with the entirety of the project. I went back and resourced a couple videos both from lessons and the IC walkthrough. This was very helpful!
- I did better about asking for help this week and particularly at the start of this project. Yain is a wonderful teacher and made me work for every single insight I got, but the directional questions was helpful to not just get started, but teaching me what pulls and pushes from where and the process of how things get called and returned. It's coming together.
- Next go around I might try some white-boarding or pseudocode to help me understand the bigger picture. I would like to get better about reading the interaction pattern to understand the end result of where we are going with the project so as to know better how to write the code for it.
- A mentor suggested I get messy with it. Before this, I've been trying to clean everything up as I go, by that I mean make each step work before moving onto the next. He suggested just get messy with it as I am figuring things out. This is a safe place to fail, early on in Turing. I tried that, particularly during the "register" part of iteration 2 and it DID get messy. I am having a tough time seeing how it all works/interacts together and am getting lost in it all. This is also due to only kind of understanding it as I go. If I truly "owned" my code this may be different.
2. What was the benefit of using TDD while building out this project?
- As stated above, it was helpful to get started by doing something small and simple, like a warmup to a difficult workout. It's made me think about what I'm expecting which then helped develop how to get there through methods and code. It's also helped tremendously to be able to utilize both pry and spec as I'm working through the testing and code files.
- I wonder if later in the mods we won't have interaction patterns to follow.
3. What was a resource that you used during this project and how did you use this to move your project forward?
- Currently my best resources are my instructors and cohort. I am beginning to build enough of a foundation to start resourcing my own answers but I did need the help to start. I will be working on googling and reading error messages.