MOD 2 Reflections
Q: In a few sentences, explain what the project was and the scope of your work. Imagine explaining your answer to a technical recruiter or a developer who you’d potentially be interviewing with who knows nothing about Turing.
What's Cookin' Answer: The goal was to create a web app that uses multiple data sets including users, recipes, and ingredients. Upon load, the app logs in a random user along with their specific information including name and personal pantry items. There is a search function allowing the user to search for recipes including names, ingredients, and tags. The user may select a specific recipe to add to their "My Menu" or "My Favorites" then select the corresponding tab from the nav bar to view the information. If a user selects the "View Recipe" button, the full recipe info is displayed including instructions, ingredients, and tags associated with that recipe.
What's Cookin' Answer: I feel it is important to create a detailed DTR document outlining an agreed upon plan of action for tackling different elements of the project. It's important to include a specific MVP, schedule for workflow, daily retros, and project board.
Q: What was a specific technical challenge your group faced? How did you approach this challenge? What went well? What was a struggle?
What's Cookin' Answer: One struggle we had was creating functionality for buttons that existed on individual recipe card that would add/remove from "My Menu" or "My Favorites". It was tricky to find a way not allow duplicates to be added and to update the specific folders in real time on keypress. We met the challenge by doing a detailed pseudo code breaking the function down into the smallest level of steps. Although it took some time, we were eventually successful.
What's Cookin' Answer: I was able to further my understanding for working with different classes and utilizing the SRP. I also furthered my skill with drying up code by breaking large functions into smaller components.
What's Cookin' Answer: I became more comfortable with using complex array prototypes to manipulate data sets. Finding a way to use .filter() to create a search function that would search multiple datasets without case sensitivity was challenging and fun.
What's Cookin' Answer: I would like to make a point to perform daily retos and reflections as well as setting clear work goals for each day. I feel this is vital to a successful project.
MOD 1 Reflections
Q:In a few sentences, explain what the project was and the scope of your work. Imagine explaining your answer to a technical recruiter or a developer who you’d potentially be interviewing with who knows nothing about Turing.
IB: This project is an app that allows users to create "Idea Cards" on the DOM that consist of a title and description of the idea. The "Save" card button remains deactivated until the user inputs data into both text fields. The user has the ability to favorite or delete specific cards. When the user selects the favorite/star property on the top-left of any card, it is reflected in the local storage. When the user refreshes the web page, the user's cards save and repopulate upon reload. The delete card function is also reflected in the local storage the same way. There is a search function allowing the user to search (without case sensitivity) in real-time with each keystroke.
IT: This project was a timer that allowed the user to choose one of three categories that lit up when selected. The user then described their goal for the time period and the specific amount of minutes/seconds they wished to time. When submitted, they will see a color-coordinated timer appear that will count down. The user can then log their activity on a card in the right column and start a new activity which can also be logged.
Q: What is your approach to working on a team? (In your answer, provide an example from this project)
IB: I appreciate working together as a group utilizing the driver/navigator method when working on projects where one or more group members are creating functionality that is new to them. This ensures that all parties understand the code and it allows for bigger wins when we all work together. For this project, majority of our code was written while we worked together.
IT: After taking ample time to think, I find it is best to first brainstorm how to tackle the project making sure that all team members ideas are heard. It is also great practice to do a DTR and discuss each team members strengths and/or weaknesses. Next, we would work to create a wire frame of the project followed by pseudo code. The last step is to start building the project.
Q: What was a specific technical challenge your group faced? How did you approach this challenge? What went well? What was a struggle?
IB: I feel our biggest struggle on this project was working with localStorage. Before we had an in-class lesson on the topic, our group did our own independent research on the topic. We then worked together to create the code. We eventually got all our functionality to work, but this was certainly the most difficult part of the project. Specifically , getting the star attribute to reflect in the localStorage gave us the most trouble.
IT: Our biggest challenge for this project was creating the countdown timer. Neither of us had done anything similar to this before. We first started by looking for doc examples online. We started building the code, but after about an hour, we were unsuccessful. We then turned to a mentor for help who guided us through part of the process. This was super helpful for understanding the setInterval and clearInterval methods.
IB: I learned the dynamics of working with three people to write one application. This was difficult at first because we were all writing code for functionality that most of us had never seen or used before.
IT: This was my first coding project working with a partner. It helped me understand how I like to work with another person and how to delegate work/when to work together.
IB: I learned to use localStorage and the find() function for the first time.
IT: I learned about setInterval and clearInterval as well as disabling buttons and how to make an app with multiple screens. All of these things I had never done before.
IB: I feel we blasted through each iteration very quickly, which was fantastic, but it took much more time for me to look back on our code to understand exactly how everything was working.
IT: Next time I do a group project, I think it would be beneficial to spend more time creating a game plan for how things will work, so we save time going back and re-factoring code to create a specific functionality.