App Academy Work

This repo contains all of my learnings and projects completed during my time as a student at App Academy, save for my final two capstone projects.

Selected Works

Versa and inlike

Versa and inlike are my final two capstone projects for App Academy, both built on a Backbone.js/Ruby on Rails. You can find the repos for the two projects below:

• Versa
• inlike

Snake

Snake was my first foray into heavy object-oriented design in JavaScript and building browser-based games.

• Snake

ActiveRecord "Lite" and Rails "Lite"

During weeks 4 and 5 respectively, I built custom, "lite" versions of ActiveRecord and Rails to solidify my understanding of how ORM's and web frameworks function.

• ActiveRecord "Lite"
• Rails "Lite"

Weekly Highlights and Learnings

The following is a brief, very high-level overview of the concepts with which I became familiar as I progressed through App Academy.

For each week, I highlight some of the projects I worked on for the week to solidify my understanding of these concepts.

Week 1: Ruby

• Object-Oriented Design in Ruby

• Data Structures and Algorithms

• Recursion

• Project highlights: Mastermind and Hangman games

Week 2: Ruby

• Classes, encapsulation, and object decomposition

• Serialization with JSON and YAML

• RSpec and test-driven development

• Project highlights:

  • Minesweeper
  • Chess
  • Checkers

Week 3: SQL and ActiveRecord

• MySQL and PostgreSQL

• ActiveRecord: Querying, Associations, Validations

• Metaprogramming in Ruby

• Project highlights:

  • URL Shortener
  • Polling App
  • ActiveRecord Lite - A lite version of ActiveRecord, built from scratch.

Week 4: Rails

• MVC framework in Ruby on Rails

• RESTful architecture

• API Consumption

• Project highlights:

  • Command-line Twitter Client
  • 99dresses Clone
  • Rails Lite - A lite version of Rails, built from scratch.

Week 5: Rails

• Rails Parameter Conventions

• Nested Attributes/Forms

• Advanced Routing

• Project highlights:

  • Reddit Clone
  • ToDo App with nested forms and assocations

Week 6: JavaScript and jQuery

• Intermediate JavaScript, including closures and prototypal inheritance

• jQuery and DOM Traversal/Manipulation

• AJAX

• Project highlights:

  • Asteroids clone, utilizing HTML5 Canvas
  • Snake clone

Week 7: Backbone.js

• Client-side MVC with Backbone.js

• Backbone Relational

• HTML5 and CSS3

• Project highlights: (All projects based on a Rails backend and Backbone frontend)

  • Gist clone
  • RSS Reader

Week 8 and Week 9: Capstone Projects

• Capstone projects:
• Versa (see http://github.com/rrzein/versa)
• inlike (see http://github.com/rrzein/inlike)