My first week at Makers is over. And if I keep learning new things at that pace I might actually be a Maker in the end. We have started with Test-driven development and the attempt to program a bike rental service. Yesterday I was sitting in a cafe in Kentish Town writing code for this weekend’s challenge. It’s similar to „Boris Bikes“ but now I have to manage airplane traffic around an airport.
It’s so much fun to solve those little problems and see my tests pass. But it has taken me a while to get going. Every time I started feeling comfortable with one of the new concepts last week, there was a lecture leaving me puzzled again. I had just understood how to get bikes out of my virtual docking station into the van, when our coach Ben told us about Encapsulation and public interfaces. That said my van was no longer allowed to go get the broken bikes. It is supposed to tell the docking station to release the bikes and dock them afterwards. Sounds like a minor change but it actually made me rethink and write my whole code again.
There have been „duck types“, „polymorphism“, ruby’s „syntactic sugar“ classes, methods and modules. Doubles, instance variables getters and setters. I don’t want to bore you with this stuff. But it’s really cool how it all starts playing together.
There was some „real life“ this week as well. I got used to the draughty house I’m staying at. I saw a group of Hare Krishnas dancing around Trafalgar Square, started tracking down London’s best independent coffee venues and got to know my fellow students. A wide range of talent and experience starting with former lawyers, designers and ending with Costas who has made his living playing Poker before.
Oh. And I’m looking for a place to stay somewhere in London. From February 27th until April 6th. Your hints are very welcome!