Singing with Sinatra

Working on the Sinatra Portfolio Project was a major turning point in the curriculum for me. Now several months into the program, it has been easy to see why many of the skills we've been learning will be important in the working world. This particular project, however, felt like something that could actually be used by an established company. It was eye-opening when I realized I now had the ability to create, update, and maintain a potentially massive database behind a front end that I designed.

It was a bit overwhelming when I first started to 'storyboard' my application; I got ahead of myself over-thinking all the model / user associations and validations that would be necessary for the app to function properly. Once I started to code, however, all that 'ActiveRecord magic' helped streamline the process and bring it together a lot quicker than I anticipated. Setting up my has_many and belongs_to relationships were a breeze, and using has_secure_password saved me a lot of time getting my validations in place.

Being able to use shotgun while actively working on the project was also a huge help. Constantly refreshing and checking new bits of code gained me a deeper understanding of setting up web applications for unpredictable web browser behavior. For instance: I noticed many of the style changes I implemented were not updating properly. At first I was left scratching my head wondering what was wrong with my code. I googled around a bit and learned that some web browsers will cache your CSS stylesheet for quicker load times. Easy fix! I gave my stylesheet link a unique id after each set of changes to avoid any further issues on updates. A small victory to be sure...but one more obstacle I can avoid in the future. Each new completed project helps me become a more learned and efficient coder. I can only predict that our next step into Rails will be another giant leap in my skillset.