Github Engineering Journal

Mix.install([
  {:jason, "~> 1.4"},
  {:kino, "~> 0.8.0", override: true},
  {:youtube, github: "brooklinjazz/youtube"},
  {:hidden_cell, github: "brooklinjazz/hidden_cell"}
])

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Engineering Journal

It’s genuinely a great habit to keep an engineering journal. You can use your engineering journal to track how you solve problems and what your work on. It’s also excellent practice with Git, GitHub, and markdown.

You may use any method (such as GitHub Desktop, or the command line) to accomplish the following.

In this exercise

• create a local git project called engineering_journal.
• create your first journal entry as a .md file. Name the file after a topic, or todays date. i.e. 2022-03-28.md.
• stage and commit the journal entry.
• create a remote repository for engineering_journal.
• push your changes to the remote repository.

Once finished, we highly recommend you use this as an engineering journal to track things you learn about Elixir.

Bonus: Foam

You may also be interested in the Foam project for Visual Studio Code. Foam provides useful features such as hyperlinks and a graph visualization of all your notes.

Follow the Foam Getting Started Guide and install the Recommended Extensions.

Create a new foam note, and include a hyperlink. Run the Foam: Show graph command to see a graph of your notes that have hyperlinks to each other.

Foam makes for an even better engineering journal, because you can create notes for specific topics, and create hyperlinks between notes to store everything you learn about that topic.

It’s also excellent practice for learning Markdown.

Mark As Completed

file_name = Path.basename(Regex.replace(~r/#.+/, __ENV__.file, ""), ".livemd")

save_name =
  case Path.basename(__DIR__) do
    "reading" -> "github_engineering_journal_reading"
    "exercises" -> "github_engineering_journal_exercise"
  end

progress_path = __DIR__ <> "/../progress.json"
existing_progress = File.read!(progress_path) |> Jason.decode!()

default = Map.get(existing_progress, save_name, false)

form =
  Kino.Control.form(
    [
      completed: input = Kino.Input.checkbox("Mark As Completed", default: default)
    ],
    report_changes: true
  )

Task.async(fn ->
  for %{data: %{completed: completed}} <- Kino.Control.stream(form) do
    File.write!(
      progress_path,
      Jason.encode!(Map.put(existing_progress, save_name, completed), pretty: true)
    )
  end
end)

form

Commit Your Progress

Run the following in your command line from the curriculum folder to track and save your progress in a Git commit. Ensure that you do not already have undesired or unrelated changes by running git status or by checking the source control tab in Visual Studio Code.

$ git checkout -b github-engineering-journal-exercise
$ git add .
$ git commit -m "finish github engineering journal exercise"
$ git push origin github-engineering-journal-exercise

Create a pull request from your github-engineering-journal-exercise branch to your solutions branch. Please do not create a pull request to the DockYard Academy repository as this will spam our PR tracker.

DockYard Academy Students Only:

Notify your teacher by including @BrooklinJazz in your PR description to get feedback. You (or your teacher) may merge your PR into your solutions branch after review.

If you are interested in joining the next academy cohort, sign up here to receive more news when it is available.

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