At last I have finally made it to the final project and it feels kind of bittersweet! A lot of things have happend over these past 15 months, from choosing to transition careers, to starting my coding journey, and deciding to take a leap of faith by enrolling into Flatirom School to learn software development all while working a full-time job. At the beginning of the year, I decided to quit my full-time job to immerse myself in the curriculum full-time, becoming a stay at home mom and teacher to my kids due to the pandemic. There were a few setbacks here and there but overall I’m proud to have pushed through regardless of wanting to quit during times of frustration.
At the top of every new year, at least most of us like to start fresh. Planning of new goals, ditching old habits and keeping track of new ones in order to improve a newer version of yourself. Writing these goals down can sometimes be a little overwhelming especially when you’re staring down at that blank sheet of paper not knowing where to start. Sometimes you just need a little guidance to get your mind flowing in the most important areas that needs the focus. And of course, nothing sucks more than when you finally have your important thoughts written down and that paper is either lost somewhere in a sea of notebooks to never be revisited again. The bonus is the convenience of an application where everything is stored all in one place.
This project was very challenging, but I learned alot! I was a bit nervous and overwhelmed about starting this project as all the knowledge learned from the entire Rails section was being put to the test and applied to this project. There were tons of ‘Aha!’ moments and the areas that I fully didnt understand before were solidified from my trial and errors while building out the application
In Rails, an association is a connection between two Active Record models. Associations are super important features as they can make common operations in your code much simpler. By using Active Record’s macro-style association class methods, you also get a number of utility methods added to your model. In the last major sections of the curriculum (Sinatra & Rails), associations have been used heavily to make the connection between models easier to understand and work with while building applications.
I’m currently a little more than half way through the self-paced software engineering course and it has been a very interesting and exciting journey! I have adopted a new style of learning, learned how to manage my time wisely (while working a full-time job and being a mom) and keeping myself motivated during the difficult times of self doubt.