Learning to code could be intimidating, this is a talk on: Things I Wish Someone had Told me when I was learning to code.

1. Things you need to know before starting an
app
By,
Sana Nasar
Software Engineer/ Developer
@SanaNasar_

2. Questions to think before starting
• What programming language should I choose?
• What framework should I pick (Rails, Nodejs, Express) ?
• What database (MongoDB, PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQLite, RethinkDB)?
• What API should I use?
• Where should I deploy this?
• How do I deploy this?
• How can I make it scale?
• How can I make it secure?

3. But wait…
Let’s take a step back.

4. Always think about why you want to code and what is your end goal.
Things I Wish Someone had Told me when I was
learning to code

5. There is nothing mystical about
coding
• You will never have to re-invent the wheel.
• It’s okay to be confused – Impostor Syndrome is a real thing.
• There will be always someone better than you.
• Get used to being frustrated.
• It’s normal to forget things.

6. Remember it never works the first time.
It never works the first and probably won’t the second or third time.

8. Talk to Your Errors
• Try talking to your errors instead of getting annoyed or frustrated.
• Always go back to the basics – from where you started.
• Analyze the root cause of the problem.
• Try debugging and find ways remove the error.

9. You are awesome!

10. Few more things to remember…
• Always start with something small.
• Coding is not easy and it will never be, but we can make it better by being persistent.
• Take a lot of time thinking about what you want to build, how you want to build before
even starting with the code.
• Finally, do not allow yourself to quit.

11. CleanUp City was born.
CleanUp city is an application that helps people be aware of their environment and work towards cleaner and
greener community. Users can post pictures of dirty streets, potholes, graffiti on walls or anything that needs to
be fixed.
Built with: Ruby on Rails, AWS S3 to store in cloud, paperclip gem, Google Maps API and hosted on
Heroku.
With all this confusion and trauma, my first app CleanUp City was born (Tada!)

13. Challenges Faced during CleanUp City
• Understanding Rails - ActiveRecord class.
class Customer < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :orders, dependent: :destroy
end
• Understanding “erb”.

14. Things that helped me over come the
challenge
• Going back to the basics.
• Reading documentation on ActiveRecord Basics.
• Understanding about Migrations, Validations and Associations.
• Any class inherits from ActiveRecord::Base to get it’s super powers.
• Finally read, read, read..

15. Thank you :)
@SanaNasar_