Disclaimer: This is the second attempt for the “JS-Rails Project Blog Post”. My first post ended up being about my project methodology and the dangers of Scope Creep, so I decided to keep that post for later. This post is about the two main issues that I ran into during the course of this project and that ended up being massive time sucks with incredibly “simple” solutions.
After working on the Sinatra project and blazing through the rails section, it seemed like this project would be completed in a matter of days tops. Ignoring the personal issues that occurred between starting the project and completing it and my usual inability to come up with a satisfactory idea, there were a few technical parts that were less obvious than expected. That especially applied to coming to a strong realization about the importance of coding environments, why testing consistently is key, and understanding communication systems.
Entering into the Sinatra project, I was confident that it wouldn’t be that hard. I think I’ve actually started dreaming about Activerecord and the MVC structure. Not surprisingly, the first hurdle I encountered had absolutely nothing to do with coding and everything to do with “what the heck should I code?”. I am pretty sure I spent at least half of my overall time spent struggling with that.
The first problem I encountered was deciding on my gem. What was a unique but feasible idea? How to put it into practice and make sure it was something that was more than just a throwaway project? Which website(s) should I consider using because they don’t change very frequently? I started with thinking hard about the examples given, but couldn’t come up with anything particularly interesting that felt unique, or feasible (because this project really brought me up against my current limitations). I let the thought gestate for a bit, then was struck by inspiration. Something that even I might use at one point or another, but that wouldn’t be something trying to solve a problem that I wasn’t ready to tackle.