My Journey Of Learning Programming Through Flatiron School #18

My name is Mason Ellwood, and I’m currently working on Flatiron School’s Online Full Stack Web Development Program. Each week, I’ll be writing about my experience, what I’m learning, and tips on learning to code.

Last post we talked about SQL, SQLite, and creating a database. This allowed us to get a little more comfortable when working with the database and what exactly it is and what that looks like all written within terminal command. But more often than not we will be writing SQL commands directly within a text editor.

SQL Database and Text Editors

To be able to write SQL in our text editor and execute that SQL against a specific database, you will have to create files in your text editor that have the .sql extension. With this extension applied will indicate that the file holds valid SQL code. Once code is written you will then execute the file directly against the database.

First, create your database:

Then create your file with the extension of .sql, this is where you put all your data that you want to add to your database.

Then with the syntax specified below, shovel the information from the created file to the database that you would like to add to.

To make sure, access the database that you have created (.sqlite2 database name) and run .schema. This allows you to make sure that the information added is indeed actually there.

With this you will now be able to integrate your files with your database.

But before I talk anymore about this I want to touch on life and staying on track. This may sound like something that has been spoken about time and time again, and there does not need to be anymore said about it. Or at least that’s what I thought about it, until one of these derailing events happened to me. Staying on course, maintaining focus on a goal, and pushing through to get to meet that goal can be easier said than done when one of these derailing events happen to you personally.

I will not get into what directly has happened to me recently, knowing that they would not like that, and for my own privacy. But basically it was something that could not be resolved quickly while taking a lot of energy across the whole family to resolve. When this happened, my life and progress across all projects halted. How could it with my mind somewhere else, and energy being placed elsewhere. But through this I learned how to manage myself through extraneous events.

My school which is online and self-paced started falling. I currently do not have a job, which makes my full time “job” The Flatiron School. But there is no penalty for skipping a day of class or taking some time off. So when family issues occurred, school was the first thing to be phased out, because family is more important. This pushed me further behind in school and progressing to my personal goal of completing school.

So how do I treat school as a mandatory job, while being a self-paced activity?

Something that I have had to do is force myself to take a step back. Allow myself space from that is going on at home, and work to progress for my future self. Please do not think that, what I am saying is to remove yourself from any issues and be absent from family functions. But if you believe that “this school” is necessary to your growth in your personal career, or necessary to job placement. That you should also set it as a precedence in your life, just as you do all important functions currently in your life. Just because it is self-paced does not mean it should be treated as self-paced.