Upon graduation from the Flatiron School, I told myself and countless others that my goal is to move out west (wasn’t sure where yet) and work a 9-5 in web development. It’s a pretty standard goal. But folks, the dream is changing. I am dreaming bigger.
Scraping websites is a challenging but rewarding process. When you have finally nailed the exact syntax, you need to scrape and then parse the HTML you need, it can be a relief and joy at the same time. My CLI gem, Easy_Vegan scrapes on two different tiers. The first scrape is somewhat static in that it will always scrape the recipe index page from a lovely blog titled “Minimalist Baker”. The second tier of scraping is done more dynamically on each of the specific recipe pages. The scraping of all these individual recipe pages is automated with the help of Ruby’s enumerable methods.
For example: ``` genre_count = {“rap” => 3, “rock” => 2, “pop” => 1}
The collaborating objects lab presents a new challenge to us as we have to define methods and variables which have specific relationships to each other. For example, a method definition might call on a series of other methods depending on if it meets the criteria set. The subsequent methods will have to then assign attributes correctly and consistently throughout so that all the instances of the classes are account for appropriately.
I’m completing a an intensive, 525+ curriculum hour, coding boot camp, but I’m not learning how to code. Rather, I’m learning how to learn how to code. Does that make sense? Upon completion of the program, I will have a couple languages and some web apps under my belt, but largely, I will still be a toddler in the developer world. This is because web development is expansive and constantly evolving. Languages, frameworks and libraries fall in and out of favor constantly. I could never learn every library or every programming language in a coding boot camp. So why am I shelling out the dough and time for this coding bootcamp? Because the program provides a solid foundation of computer science and problem solving, and more importantly, I will have learned how to learn how to code. I will know how to navigate web development resources, de-bug, test code, and how to methodically tackle a web app, or learn a new language entirely. These are the skills that will be my lifeline as a junior web developer.