##Pre-course exercise: Student Directory
####Summary of Activity
This was one of the Makers Academy pre-course exercises that introduced a number of mixed concepts that would be developed at length throughout the course.
This exercise introduced the very first concept of starting a project from scratch. The project activity built up as follows:
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Creating a Project Directory locally, a new GitHub repo, and linking the two together.
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Introduction to the use of the text editor (Sublime) for making the production code for the App.
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Introduction to the concept of Version control, creating a basic feature and then building on that funcitonality:
- Version 0: Setting up the project as described above.
- Version 1: Adding the first basic feature (namely creating a list of students).
- Version 2: Refactoring the code (this was the very first mention of 'refactoring').
- Version 3: Introducing an array for the list of students.
- Version 4: Introducing the use of Ruby methods to list students.
- Version 5: Adding extra information using Key/Value pairs.
- Version 6: Adding user input into the App.
- Version 7: Building an interactive menu.
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Commiting each completed version to Github via the command line.
####Lessons Learned
This was the first exercise in the pre course material that had some semblance of an 'App' and was hugely helpful in showing how a project, however basic, might be set up and used.
I enjoyed this exercise immensely, in the way I was using a number of different programs (GitHub, Sublime, Terminal) to produce something tangible. It added a little bit of confidence that the learning material was 'for' something (ie, it can be put to good use), and was a little less dry that the previous work I'd done to date.
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