I just made something! For the first time ever I made a stupid little ruby program to do something that a PivotTable was giving me fits over at work. I had a spreadsheet like so:

But what I really needed was a text file that I could print and hand out to people like so:

And I did it with the power of Ruby! I was so proud of myself. I’ve never taken a real world problem (from my work no less) and made a tiny bit of code do exactly what I want it to. It just adds to my love of coding.

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require 'csv'

contents = CSV.open "strengths.csv", headers: true, header_converters: :symbol
File.open("out.txt", 'w') do |f|
  contents.each do |row|
    headers = contents.headers
      name = row[0]
    strength = {}
      i = 1
    while i < row.length
      if row[i]
        strength[(row[i].to_i)] = i
      end
      i += 1
    end
    f.write("#{name} \n")
    stren = strength.sort_by { |k, v| k }

    stren.each do |k,v|
      f.write("\t #{headers[v].to_s.capitalize} \n")
    end
    f.write("\n")
  end
end

And yes, those are my StrengthsFinder top 5 in the second picture. Everyone at work had to do them and I think mine are very accurate.

Someday I’ll be a better writer of my thoughts. In the mean time, there is a lot to catch up on. My bestest, best friend got into Hackbright! She starts in September. I am so ridiculously happy for her, not in the least because I feel like I taught her most of what she knows about coding currently and I can’t wait to be able to have deep, nerdy conversations when she’s all done with the mind-meld that is programming. It’s a little bittersweet for me as I was the one who initially sent her the link. I’d been thinking about trying for it myself, but the timeline just wasn’t right this year.

Hackbright became my gateway drug, however. I found out they weren’t the only game in town. There are all shapes and sizes of programming bootcamps and after reviewing a lot of them, I’m currently in the process of applying for App Academy. Application and first coding test are a check. I’m literally taking a break from studying for the second coding test to type this up. So second round of coding and then (fingers crossed) a coding interview left to go before I wait with bated breath to find out if I get the best birthday present ever (birthday - Nov 14, start date - Nov 18!).

Besides hopefully an entire life shift I’ve been sticking to my routine of Coursera class. Startup Engineering is at its halfway point and I have a shell of a crowdfunding idea here. Oh yeah, the Code Girls and Octavia are real things, sort of. They are mostly in the brains of the three of us (aforementioned bestest, best friend and my other best friend) but I’ve said out loud to myself that I want a working project within 5 years, so obviously I have to do it now.

Other than that: quietness. I spent two weeks in California earlier this month and spent most of the time falling deeper in love with the Bay Area. I came back and bought myself a Mac (for those keeping score, I now technically own 4-5 laptops, but two have been handed down to my parents, one I received for free and it doesn’t really work anyway, the 4th is a tiny fun Linux netbook and the 5th is the new shiny MacBook Air I lovingly call “Monster”). This Mac represents my promise to myself it is my first true “dev” machine. The first things I installed on it were Ruby and Python and all the little bits that go along with that.

Wish me luck. I think I should probably be studying.