ProjectEcho: Interstitial Journaling Project 3

 I am thinking it is 99% done as I am not coming up with new ideas to add to it. 

https://github.com/krgirard33/ProjectEcho

Started as a note taking app that time stamps the notes, 

• then got project labels so I could figure out what project I was working on, 
• then got todos which ties into the projects, 
• got a calendar so I could limit the notes to the last 2 weeks, 
• then finished todos got limited to 1 month and added to the calendar, 
• then project dashboards, 
• then elapsed time so I could see how many hours I spent in each day, 
• then how many hours on a project, 
• then I added in recurring todos (The thing I am still tweaking around, not sure I am happy with).

 Need to update the User's Guide. 

And now I wonder what will come next.  

 

Rule 14

 If it is a major issue to get something fixed in the source program, then you have to fix it in your program. 

Inventing work arounds is fun.

ProjectEcho: Interstitial Journaling Project 2

 I have been having a lot of fun creating this. Totally flying by the seat of my pants, creating new features based on "It be neat if it had..." 

I think it is almost ready to try and use at work.  

https://github.com/krgirard33/ProjectEcho

 

ProjectEcho: Interstitial Journaling Project

So, what does a programmer do after a week of programming? Works on my own silly project., an Interstitial Journaling page... that has mission creep. 

The basic idea of interstitial journaling is to write a few lines every time you take a break, and to track the exact time you are taking these notes. (For more on this: https://nesslabs.com/interstitial-journaling)

 I needed a better way to track what I am doing at work, as different projects get charged to different accounts, and this looked interesting and easy.

 I through in a calendar so I can see what I did last week, and a todo list so I can kinda plan stuff. 
But most of it has been me working with it and saying "It needs...". Very little planning. 

It is ProjectEcho as it is a way for me to get some feedback on where all the time went, what was I doing, etc.  

https://github.com/krgirard33/ProjectEcho 

Jira

 I have decided that 'latest' is the 'sudo' of Jira api. 

Also, does anyone have a good source for learning Jira api?  

Hired for our tech skills

 Mile long path to a folder. 

Cut & paste it into email... 

And because the very last folder has a space between the words, rather than a _, which is what the 10 other folders have, it fails to work, and I have to manually edit the link.

And we were all hired for our tech skills.

31 character limit

Making something for work, a nice simple situation of reading all xlsx files in a folder and moving the data to a tab in a single xlsx file. Easy peesy. 

30 mins later I run it the first time. It ran, but was giving me "Excel found errors, but can recover the data". Data all looked good, except every tab after the first was named "Recovered #". 

2hrs of work, with lots of long walks, and off the clock research, later, I discovered that the issue is the file names that I am trying to use for the tab names are longer than 31 characters, and the first 31 characters are the same.  OK, the first 39 characters are the same, and then there are 10 more at the end that match. These file names are insanely long. 

So I set up a simple replace to remove everything that is duplicate data in the names, and it all works! The issue was in excel, not my code. I went so far as to try writing the data to a csv, and then to the final excel file to see if there was some weird characters or formatting setting it off, before I wondered if there is a limit to the size of an Excel sheet name.

Can AI code?

 Today for fun I wanted to see how much I could do just using AI code.

Below is the prompts I used:

1. Using python, I want to create a todo type app that uses json to store the data
2. Based off the code above, add in a due date
3. Sort tasks by due date
4. Add in a priority rating for task, sort task by due date and then by priority.
5. Have option 5 show a list of uncompleted tasks, and a list of completed tasks
6. Add in an option to edit existing task, including description, due date & priority
7. Rather than using the command line, lets create a html interface

Step 6 I hit the first thing it didn't take into account. If you edit a task that already has a priority but remove it and don't assign it a new one it would assign it null, and then couldn't show the lists of tasks. I wrote my first bit of code and changed None to 0. Step 7... it tried to use enumerate in the task filter, which didn't work. I told it the error message I was getting and it offered me 2 fixes. Both worked, so I went with the simpler one.

Then I found out the edit button didn't bring up the edit form. "Oh hey, sorry. Here are some fixes to the JS"... still not working. Fed it all of the code in index.html. "Here you go. I had left the edit form empty". That worked.

Link to the repo I am storing it in, with pictures, and arrows, and a note on the back: https://github.com/krgirard33/todo_app

When dreams die

"Please write a function that reverses a string using the split and join method" 

2 years ago that was a very important thing to me, and I got to watch as multiple other students realized that coding was not for them. 

I spent around 45 minutes after class helping one student try and wrap their brain around it, and they never did. I had an easier time teaching dogs to climb ladders and slide down slides. Yeah, I am odd. 

Now I am at the level of "Please write a function that checks if a string is a palindrome, and if it is say 'No work is needed', and if it is not then reverse the string.", and I bet that you are as well.

Rubber Duck

 When you have problems, explain the problem to your rubber duck (It doesn't have to be a rubber duck. I've talked to AI, my dog, plants, even humans if I have to).

Explain the problem in as simple of terms as possible, like you want a 5-year-old to understand it (Oh, if I had a 5yo... no, no, no, way too disruptive to my home life.)
At some point in the process, you will come up with new ways to approach the problem. Or, you will keep talking to your rubber duck.
Wait...
while problem:
talk to rubber duck

I think while might be the solution I am looking for.
Thanks for the help, all you rubber duckies.

Just part of writing code

TFW you think "This function should do XYZ" and make it do it right the first time.

So much better than when I rewrote a function 3 times, and was questioning if I even had a clue of what I am doing, before realizing I was editing the wrong csv, which is why it wasn't finding my test cases.

That these 2 things happened 15 minutes apart... That is just part of writing code, right?

 I have made the thing.

I used what I made to update part of a Confluence page.

The updating the Confluence page part is ugly.

Part of the part I made turned a section filled with 'MW-Req-1124' 77 times, and 'MW-Req-116' 56 times into 'MW-Req 1124: 77, MW-Req-116: 56'

Now to make it better, and based on api calls and not scraping a spreadsheet.

Bang your head! Tech stuff will drive you mad!

If at first you do not secede, bang your head on the desk a couple of more times. Then step back and look at it all again.

Trying to install custom HTML snippits in VS Code. Looks super easy. Follow the tutorial perfectly. https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/editor/userdefinedsnippets#_create-your-own-snippets

Go here.
Select HTML
Paste this in the json file that opens.
Save it.
Done.

Fails to work. OK, delete file and try again.
Fails again.
What the... oh wait. The html file I am trying it in is coming up as a django-html file. What if I pick django rather than html?
SUCCESS!

My 1st interview

 I had my first real interview. Not just for a coding job, but ever. All the jobs I have had in the past were the type where you talk to someone for 10-15 minutes, and they say "Can you start Monday?", or my 20+ yr office job where I came in as a temp, and after 6 months they asked if I wanted to become an employee. 

I bombed it. Big time. 

In the first 2 minutes, I said something that was overly friendly, and then all I could focus on was how I messed up, so then I did it again, and again, and it became a downward spiral.

Afterward, I could tell you every single part I messed up. 

Meeting with LaunchCode giving me feedback on the interview.

Them: We got feedback. 

Me: I ::: covers everything I did wrong :::

Them: Yep, that about sums it all up. So what are you going to do about this for the future?

Me: I am going to ::: list out the things I need to do :::

Them: Yeah, that is what I was going to suggest. I think this is the fastest meeting like this I've had. You know what to do, now you just need to practice more.

Never assume malice

 "Never assume malice when stupidity will suffice. Never assume stupidity when ignorance will suffice. Never assume ignorance when forgivable error will suffice. Never assume error when information you hadn't adequately accounted for will suffice." - rwallace expanding on Hanlons Razor

I asked someone if they had forgotten to push the second part to the repo, because it has been 14hrs. 1) Always check that you pushed all the parts. 2) If you have gone down that list and not checked off any of those as being the reason things are wrong, you have big problems. Praise them in public, criticize/coach them in private. And expect the same from others.

Coding Pool Party

 I'll admit that having Java in one folder, JavaScript in another, and MySQL next door, all happily communicating back and forth is pretty nice, but also not 100% clicking in my brain.

I get that they both can send messages to the database, it is the part where the JavaScript frontend says "Hey, can you throw me a beer?", and Java says "Let me grab it out of the db cooler"...

Wait, I think that is how it works... They are just yelling at everyone, and everyone who can do that does it, and if you can't do it, you just ignore it.

And now all my code is getting hammered, sunburned, and falling in the pool.

The Postman always Bings twice

 I spent way too long yesterday failing to spot that I was missing a comma. A combination of never having used Postman before, and the font in Postman being tiny. 

A quick search told me how to make the font bigger... which Postman does by making everything bigger as it is a zoom. Different. 

Now that I've used it for a bit I can see it is going to be something I use often. Noticed they have a Trello API which falls in line with a project I want to put together someday. 

Meeting tonight with the group, hoping to nail some more of the ideas, concepts, and designs to the wall. Also really hoping that the TA puts up the repo that they told us would be up 2 days ago. 

Still trying to figure out how I seem to be the leader of the group. People keep coming to me for what is it going to do, how will it do it, and what should it look like. An inventory system wasn't my idea. But I will admit that a Yelp-type app for dispensaries might have been more than we could handle in the time we have. But we could have gotten a MVP up, and then expanded it later. Who knows, maybe I'll put it together, drag in some friends who code, make it an Android app, and try to figure out how to make some money off it. Seems like there would be a market for such.