Week apr 7 - apr 11

For this week I worked 3 days on eventwax, the site for events management and on thursday I wrote a stories proposal document for other project Thrill Jockey. Basically this week on eventwax was about to continue with the integration of a editor to the description fields of the event's creation, so that it would be nice for the users to change the styles and make it look better.

So, I worked on the integration of the ckeditor into the site, which was successful. At the beginning it was a complete headache because I  did not  know anything but after a research it  was a easy as to downloads the ckeditor folder with the js files, locate it into the javascript folder into the the project, and add the script call to the views that will use it.

After that integration I found that some features were not working properly, so we told that to the client, and what he said was that what he want us to do is just to quit those features that are not working, and that's what I'll be working after easter. Also for this week there were 2 bugs that needed to be fixed ASAP  so I also fixed those 2 bugs, they were about meet DRY (Dont repeat yourself) and a problem with a validation of an event's capacity.

Finally on Thrill Jockey, I worked writing the stories that are missing to do a proposal to the client, from that we saw that there is still work missing but that is not too much. On this week I learned to integrate the ckeditor on a rails app, also apply DRY, and about validations on rails. On the other side for TJ I learned that proposals need to be very detailed, everything needs to be understandable to every person knowing about programming or not needs to understand it.

Week march 31 - apr 4

For this week the project still continues on stand by, however there was a meeting to get information, and try to  make alive the project again. Also I continue with the solitaire game and eventwax project.

On Thrill Jockey project we went to a meeting were we got a bunch of information, the team show us how they manage the Catalog, Press and Artist part, that is because the client said that she  wants to reuse that part from the rails app that was build before. So, we spent a whole afternoon getting info about it.

The conclusions we got from that is that, most of the site is just to display info, so if we use it still we need to code a lot of functionality. So, the next step took was to create a document to explain the structure and mark  possible new stories.

As part of the work of the week we finish the part of the solitaire that was assigned, and started doing the first real tests. This was really hard, I could not got the trick, so I need to finish the rspec book. Also, we started the introduction to phone gap, I did a hello world with that and the next step is to try to pass a simple rails app into it.

Finally on eventwax I worked including the ckeditor to the add an event functionality on the description. It took too much time, but finally it worked. I did not need the installation fo any gem, just to download the files and add them to the public/javascripts folder and add the class to the component that was going to use it with a function that activates it. That was a really interesting learning of the week, sometimes we think that the easiest way to add a component is to add a gem, however this was not the case.

Also on eventwax, we wrote the stories in which we broke the redesign add an event story to make them more manageable. I started changing the template to make it look as the client wants.

Week Mar 24 - 28

For this week our project was on stand by. But we use this time to start another project and keep working on event wax. During the day with the help and guidance of a coworker we work on a solitaire on rails from scratch. That make me learn how to build the ruby-version and the ruby-gemset files, also how to make the models,controllers and views without the rails generate command and finally the basics about relations between tables on models.

On the other hand on eventwax I worked analysing rake tasks about invoicing and got feedback from the client about the new story that my coworker and I are going to start. Basically what I did on the analysis of the tasks  was to go method by method to understand what was the problem, with the techlead we got to the conclusion that the problem of repeated invoices was external to the code, in fact we got an email of the client saying that the command was run twice and that  caused the error. 

However there are some inefficiencies that the client wants to quit from the code, so I'm still working with that trying to find out a way to make it more efficient. Finally some of the learnings of this week are a better understanding of rails, having someone who knows the language and tells you what is wrong and if there is a better way to do something, is something that really helps to have a better understanding and get some tricks. 

Also that not always that are bugs on an app and you are pretty sure that the code works correctly find another explanation for the problem (as the connections with the provider of charges on cards, or the command being run twice).Trying to improve the efficiency of code that has some years needs that the programmer knows the code in a deep way.

Week March 17 - 21

For this week I worked from the client side, we are in Chicago. The purpose of this week  was to show to the client the work that has been done, get more information that helps us do in a better way our work and continue with the order processing topic.

The week started with a shortly meeting with the client, where we met for the first time. That  gave me background to be kind of prepared to the next day. So, for the real meeting, we did a presentation about what is done, what is missing, a little retrospective and got some information.

I showed to the client how a part of the administration side of the application works, and solved some doubts that came after the demonstration. Moreover after talking about the way  in which orders are going to be managed we got a kind of agreement. We propose to the client to manage their preorders with the feature that spree offers, that is a backorderable order, and we will finish the customization of this to give them what they want by adding a field on the product administration page, that says when the product becomes available, and automatically, change that pre-order status and add stock to the product.

For this week are not too many learnings on the technical side, instead of that we got a rich learning  of the client side. Not all the clients are the same, so as a developer I need to figure out the best way to show and say things. Images and diagrams are a helpful tool. We don't need to compromise to everything, as a professional, we need to know when to say no. Sometimes we need to going slowly on the project to make the client confortable, press the client make things not progress.