NicholasJacques

TASKING 101

• Research
  • Time needed to read documentation, understand problem, investigate already existing solutions
  • Coorespond with third parties if needed
• Spike
  • Build proof of concept
  • Try out multiple potential implementations
  • Decide on final impelementation
• Specs

NicholasJacques

My first contribution to open source

It been seven (short/long) months since I decided to dive head first into the world of software development by attending Turing School of Software & Design. In that time there have been a lot of milestones: My first "Hello World", my first sorting algorithm, the first time I did "rails new", deploying my first app to Heroku and so on. In a period punctuated by frequent milestones, none have felt quite as momentus as making my first open source contribution.

As a new developer, making an open source contribution feels like an especially big deal. Having code that I wrote merged into a professional quality open source project was an incredible validation of my skills.

The project that I decided to contribute too is called AgileVentures. AgileVentures is a non-profit organization based in the UK that provides opportunities for developers to contribute to open source projects. People are also able to submit their projects to AgileVentures in order to gain a wider base of

NicholasJacques

Interview Practice Reflection

In week two of mod 4 I participated in a mock-interview with Ian douglas. The interview consisted of two parts: technical questions and code challenges. Going into the interview I felt pretty confident about my ability to answer technical questions and a little apprehensive about the code challenges. My actual experience in the interview turned out to be the opposite of what I expected. I struggled to answer the technical questions eloquently, even when I was familiar with their content. I did, however, do really well on the coding challenges which was encouraging. Ian provided me a lot of resources to improve on technical questions which I have been reviewing periodically. His interview prep emails have been super helpful as well.

NicholasJacques

Handroll JWT Authentication for your Rails API because no on likes using Devise

The Problem:

If you’re new to building API’s with Rails you’ve probably wondered how to authenticate requests made to the API to ensure that they are coming from the correct source with correct permissions. Since API’s are stateless applications they do not have the ability to create sessions for users. (Read about how Rails Sessions work here) This creates some challenges when trying to handle authentication because the app isn’t able to remember a user’s session data from one request to the next.

The Solution:

Enter Json Web Tokens. Json Web Tokens (JWT) are a self contained authentication method designed for stateless authentication. A self contained authentication method is one that does not require any storage on the back-end to verify the authenticity of the request. All of the data necessary to authenticate the request is contained right inside the token!

What does a JWT look like?

NicholasJacques

=Navigating=
    visit('/projects')
    visit(post_comments_path(post))

=Clicking links and buttons=
    click_link('id-of-link')
    click_link('Link Text')
    click_button('Save')
    click('Link Text') # Click either a link or a button
    click('Button Value')

NicholasJacques

M4 Reflection

Fork this gist and answer these questions to reflect on your learning experiences.

• What brought you to Turing?

I was brought to Turing by a dissatisfaction with my current career and a desire to learn something new and challenging. I also happened to be a bit of nerd.

• Where do you see yourself after Turing?

NicholasJacques

Module 4 Goals

• I want to have a job offer by the end of Mod 4
• Based on my financial situation I pretty much need to start working the day I graduate. No pressure.

Strategy To Achieve Goals:

• Polish Resume and other documents in prepartion for applying
• Spend the break week sending out at least 8 job applications

Coding (both including your module 4 curriculum and anything outside of it):

• Polish Turing projects and github profile

NicholasJacques

Flower Exercise - Nicholas Jacques

Petal 1: Most Valued Knowledges/Fields of Interests

Most Valued skills:

• Management
• Business
• Home Construction
• Culinary Arts
• Customer Service

NicholasJacques

Reflection on in-person feedback

Date of Conversation: 4/21/2017

Project: Bike Share

• How did you prepare for this conversation?

  In preparing for this conversation I thought about two different things: What area do I want to recieve feedback on and what areas do I think are most important to give feedback on for my partners. I also tried to think about what blind spots I might have in my own performance and how to solicit feedback on those areas. Overall our project was a really successful and I enjoyed working with both partners so I had to think a little bit harder about what kind of coaching to give and how to frame it for the best possible impact.

• How did the conversation go for you? What was easy about the conversation? What was more difficult?

NicholasJacques

• List all the students and their classes

SELECT students.name, classes.name
FROM students
INNER JOIN enrollments
ON enrollments.student_id = students.id
INNER JOIN classes
ON enrollments.class_id = classes.id;

• List all the students and their classes and rename the columns to "student" and "class"