An example template for your Turing pre-work Gist

cp-prework.md

Turing School Prework - Caroline Powell

Task A- Practice Typing:

• screenshots of scores will be posted in comments

Task B- Algorithmic Thinking & Logic:

• screenshots of completed sections will be posted in comments

Task C- Create your Gist:

Task D- Set up your Environment:

• Did you run into any issues?
• How do you open Atom from your Terminal?
• What is the file extension for a Ruby file?
• What is the Atom shortcut for hiding/ showing your file tree view?
• What is the Atom shortcut for quickly finding a file (fuzzy finder)?

Task E- The Command Line:

• screenshots of your terminal after each exercise will be posted in comments

Day One Questions:

• What does pwd stand for, and how is this command helpful?
• What does hostname tell you, and what shows up in YOUR terminal when you type hostname?

Task F- Learn Ruby:

Option 1 Questions:

IRB

• How do you start and stop irb?
• What might you use irb for?

Variables

• How do you create a variable?
• What did you learn about the rules for naming variables?
• How do you change the value of a variable?

Datatypes

• How can you find out the class of a variable?
• What are two string methods?
• How can you change an integer to a string?

Strings

• Why might you use double quotes instead of single quotes in Ruby?
• What is this used for in Ruby: #{}?
• How would you remove all the vowels from a string?

Input & Output

• What do 'print' and 'puts' do in Ruby?
• What does 'gets' do in Ruby?
• Add a screenshot in the comments of the program you created that uses 'puts' and 'gets', and give it the title, "I/O".

Numbers & Arithmetic

• What is the difference between integers and floats?
• Complete the challenge, and post a screenshot of your program in the comments with the title, "Numbers".

Booleans

• What do each of the following symbols mean?
  • ==

  • =

  • <=
  • !=
  • &&
  • ||
• What are two Ruby methods that return booleans?

Conditionals

• What is flow control?
• What will the following code return?

apple_count = 4

if apple_count > 5
  puts "Lots of apples!"
else
  puts 'Not many apples...'
end

• What is an infinite loop, and how can you get out of one?
• Take a screenshot of your program and terminal showing two different outputs, and post it in the comments with the title, "Conditionals".

nil

• What is nil?
• Take a screenshot of your terminal after working through Step 4, and post it in the comments with the title, "nil".

Symbols

• How can symbols be beneficial in Ruby?
• Does naming symbols use the same rules for naming variables?
• Take a screenshot of your terminal after working through Step 4, and post it in the comments with the title, "Symbols".

Arrays

• What method can you call to find out how many elements are in an array?
• What is the index of pizza in this array: ["pizza", "ice cream", "cauliflower"]?
• What do 'push' and 'pop' do?

Hashes

• Describe some differences between arrays and hashes.
• What is a case when you might prefer an array? What is a case when you might prefer a hash?
• • Take a screenshot of your terminal after working through Step 2, and post it in the comments with the title, "Hashes".

Task G- Prework Reflection:

• Were you able to get through the work? Did you rush to finish, or take your time?
• What are you most looking forward to learning more about?
• What topics would you most like to see reinforced by instructors?
• What is most confusing to you about what you've learned?
• What questions do you have for your student mentor or for your instructors?

Pre-work Tasks- One Month Schedule

(Note: You will most likely only get to the following sections if you have more than a week for your pre-work. If you are doing the one week pre-work schedule, you may delete this section of the Gist.)

Railsbridge Curriculum, cont.

• Loops: Take a screenshot of your "Challenge" program, and post it as a comment in your Gist.
• What challenges did you try for "Summary: Basics"? Post a screenshot of one of your programs.
• Functions: How do you call a function and store the result in a variable?
• Describe the purpose of the following in Ruby classes: initialize method, new method, instance variables.
• How to Write a Program: Screenhero with your student mentor and share your program. Write a bit about what you found most challenging, and most enjoyable, in creating your program.

Launch School Ruby Book

• screenshots will be posted in comments
• What are your three biggest takeaways from working through this book?

CodeSchool

• screenshots will be posted in comments
• What are your two biggest takeaways from working through this tutorial?
• What is one question you have about Git & GitHub?

Workflow Video

• Describe your thinking on effective workflow. What shortcuts do you think you'll find most useful? What would you like to learn or practice that will most help you improve your speed and workflow?

Michael Hartl's Command Line Book

As you complete each section, respond to the related questions below (mostly taken directly from the tutorial exercises):

• 1.3: By reading the "man" page for echo, determine the command needed to print out “hello” without the trailing newline. How did you do it?
• 1.4: What do Ctrl-A, Ctrl-E, and Ctrl-U do?
• 1.5: What are the shortcuts for clearing your screen, and exiting your terminal?
• 2.1: What is the "cat" command used for? What is the "diff" command used for?
• 2.2: What command would you use to list all txt files? What command would you use to show all hidden files?
• 3.1: How can you download a file from the internet, using the command line?
• 3.3: Describe two commands you can use in conjunction with "less".
• 3.4: What are two things you can do with "grep"?

Task F - Learn Ruby

BOOLEANS

• What do each of the following symbols mean?
• - == equals
• - >= greater than or equal to
• - <= less than or equal to
• - != not equal to
• - && and
• - || or
• What are two Ruby methods that return booleans? .empty? .nil?

CONDITIONALS

• What is flow control? When a program executes on branch of code versus another based on a Boolean
• What will the following code return? Not many apples
• What is an infinite loop, and how can you get out of one? When the conditional while statement never evaluates as false, the loop will continue to iterate indefinitely. You can stop this by typing ctrl+c.
• Conditionals Program:

Task F - Learn Ruby

NIL

• What is nil? Nil means nothing and is used to show that a variable hasn't been assigned anything.
• Screenshot of nil exercises:

Task A - Learn Typing

Task F - Learn Ruby

SYMBOLS

• How can symbols be beneficial in Ruby? Symbols are efficient ways to store data and use less memory, which can help performance in complex programs. Days and months are good examples of when to use symbols.
• Does naming symbols use the same rules for naming variables? Yes
• Screenshot of Symbols exercise:
  

Task F - Learn Ruby

ARRAYS

• What method can you call to find out how many elements are in an array? .length
• What is the index of pizza in this array: ["pizza", "ice cream", cauliflower"]? 0
• What do 'push' and 'pop' do? Push adds an element to the end of an array, and pop removes and returns the last element in an array.

Task F - Learn Ruby

HASHES

• Describe some differences between arrays and hashes.
  • Arrays use brackets [], and Hashes use curly braces {}.
  • You access elements in an array via their index number. You access elements in a hash via their key.
  • You assign keys to refer to elements in a hash. Index numbers are automatically assigned in an array.
• What is a case when you might prefer an array? What is a case when you might prefer a hash?
  • You might prefer an array when the order of elements matters and you don't care to refer to them via a key, such as an order list.
  • You might prefer a hash when you want to refer to the elements in the list via the key, such as months of the year.
• Screenshot of Hashes exercise:

Task G - Pre-work Reflection

• Were you able to get through the work? Did you rush to finish, or take your time? I was able to get through the first seven days without rushing. If I wasn't still working my job up until the school start date I would have been able to get much further without rushing.
• What are you most looking forward to learning more about? Arrays and Hashes. I can tell I'll be using these a lot and can already imagine how powerful they will be.
• What topics would you most like to see reinforced by instructors? Creating, writing to, moving, and manipulating files via the terminal
• What is most confusing to you about what you've learned? I don't think I fully got Symbols. I'd like to hear this explained by someone and maybe it will click.
• What questions do you have for your student mentor or for your instructors? I don't have any right now. I can't wait to get started!