Rails Study, Day 4: Still Working on the Dev Environment

So far I have spent time on the following:

1. Vagrant
2. Docker
3. Digital Ocean Droplet
4. Heroku

However, I'm going to take a step back and reconsider what I'm trying to accomplish.

What is my deliverable?

I want to build a Rails site, hosted on Heroku, that showcases my solutions to puzzles from Advent of Code.

How is my work supposed to flow?

Images, containers, Atom, etc.

1. Development environment (DE) is separate from the host operating system. (Docker container or VM)
2. Text editor (Atom) has read/write access to the code in the DE.
3. The DE can be easily duplicated for a sandbox server.
4. Code from the DE can be pushed to Github; from Github, the latest code cloned.
5. Changes from the DE can be pushed to Docker Hub; from DH the latest version of the DE.
6. Production code from the DE can be pushed to Heroku; from Heroku, the latest production code, although that should be available in Github.

What are the specifications of my development environment?

1. Version control of all relevant packages.
2. Read/Write access to development environment from host.
3. Access to online platform (Github, 
4. Available locally, without a constant internet connection.
5. Totally accessible by Atom text editor on my host machine.
6. Can upload code to Heroku, pull the latest code from Heroku, and push updated code to Heroku.
7. Can push updates to the environment to a repository.

What shall be my development environment?

1. Docker container for the DE, with all the necessary packages installed.
2. Atom text editor installed on host.
3. FTP access between DE and host.
4. Github access from DE.
5. Docker Hub access from DE.
6. Heroku access from DE.

Command Line Course on Code Academy Complete

I didn't learn anything I didn't already know, but it was good to formalise my understanding garnered from years of bashing away in BASH.

Progress Report on Full Stack Web Development Training

I've committed myself completely to the full stack web development course through Code Academy, and it's going quite well.

My goal for the coming week is to complete all the courses leading up to Ruby and Ruby on Rails before I attend the Melbourne Ruby meetup next week.

My main priority is Ruby, so at this stage I am interested in the other components of the full stack only insofar as they are strictly needed for working with Ruby on Rails.  Once I've completed the main modules of all the courses in the stack, I'll go back and complete the supplementary exercises to sharpen my skills.

At the moment, this is how it looks:

Having spents years fiddling with basic Python and BASH, none of this is particularly difficult, but I commend Code Academy on putting together courses that give a good introduction to each language and framework.  I was a little bored by the HTML & CSS course because I came into fairly comfortable with both, so my only recommendation would be for Code Academy to consider a way of giving the equivalent of RPL (Recognition of Prior Learning) to students who can pass certain tests with ease.

For example, if someone already understands what a boilerplate is, a few questions on a test would bear this out and that portion of the course could be marked as completed automatically.  Instead, I had to slog through material I already knew back to front.

Still, I strongly recommend the course.  I feel that it is working well for me, and will commence the next stage of my journey towards a career as Ruby developer with confidence upon completion of these courses.

Just Signed Up for the Full Stack Course at Code Academy!

We'll see how it goes.

First Steps in Ruby on Rails

My first course on Code Academy is complete.  It's a small step, but an important one.

DevOps Career Path Map, Version 0.1

DevOps Career Path, Version 0.1

This is my first attempt at charting the course towards DevOps.  From what I can tell, DevOps engineers are drawn from the ranks of experienced software developers, or failing that, Computer Science graduates who need minimal training to work competently in a DevOps role.

Unfortunately for me, I meet neither of those requirements, which means either working my way into a software development career or going to university.
I have spent enough years at university; as far as I am concerned, if I need a degree for the job, the job's not worth it.
Ergo, the path to DevOps will be via software development, which raises the question of how to become a successful software developer?

I see broadly two avenues:

1. Working as a junior developer or serving an internship.
2. Getting an auxiliary role, e.g. in technical support or on the customer helpdesk, to get into the company, from which point I can work to be promoted into the development team.

For the latter I am already eminently qualified.

For the former, my daily work can be divided into three areas:

1. Studying programming, i.e. learning to code at a professional level.  A good starting point is Code Academy and Udemy.  Once I have completed the courses through those websites, I think I'll have a much better idea of where to go from there.
2. Online self-promotion.  This includes my blog, using LinkedIn, etc.
3. Schmoozing with professional developers and DevOps engineers.  In Melbourne, there are Meetup groups for DevOps, Python, Ruby, etc.  I have already joined those and will keep an eye out for any others.  At the moment I'm quite enjoying Ruby; although I started on Python, I think Ruby might become my favourite language.  I'll see how I feel in a couple of months.

That's it for now.  Does this seem like a good plan to you?  Any suggestions?