Forem: Clifton Hill

Project Retrospective: Chingu's Voyage 25 - Team Gecko

Clifton Hill — Wed, 17 Feb 2021 21:40:39 +0000

My first Chingu project was a great experience!
Mentored by Jim Medlock with a team of 5

We set out to develop a website similar to www.catchafire.com focused on being a resource for Non-Profits to post Web Development tasks for volunteer developers to find, complete and gain recommendations. This would be a place for any developers to give back to non-profits, but it would be focused on those looking to increase their skills and gain credit in the process.

This is what we ended up with after 6 weeks: https://chingu-v25.herokuapp.com/

Working with Cesar Diaz on the backend, I got to further experiment with connecting to an Atlas MongoDB using mongoose. The wealth of options of how to access and update data often brought paralysis through analysis.

Other skills developed:

Working with JSON Web Tokens
Using Postman to test routes (Such a treasure of a program!)
Git version control
How to work as a team
How to work together jointly on Github
With Cesar's help I learned more about advanced routing

What worked:

Agile methodology - constant communication
Consistent time to meet
Working together at the same time
Being able to ask questions live of the team
Having a mentor to turn to when you are absolutely out of your element

What didn't:

Too much prep documentation delayed starting the project; overly complicated
Not connecting FE to BE early enough to test functionality
Fear of treading on someone else's toes
Going too big crashed the project when a CORS incompatibility prevented the FE & BE from working together. Without a greater understanding of connecting the two repos, it would have been advisable to keep the two repos joined as one.

Standouts:

Ceasar was a master of the backend, diving into strange new waters without hesitation and almost always swimming back to the surface with a new treasure.
Abby brought CSS polish to the project and a solid understanding of React that helped the front end look professional.

In the end, the project wasn't finished and doesn't work. The BE routes work, as tested by Postman and there was a jerry-rigged "solution" to bypass the CORS problem that showed the two repos were talking together, but we might have been better off with just a single repo. I understand that it is a more professional setup to have separate repos, but in this case we didn't have the expertise or time to pull it off. More rapidly connecting FE to BE would have also cut down on wasted time.

Lots to take away from this experience, I thank my teammates: Abby, Olivia, Ryan, Cesar and our Project Owner: Jim Medlock for all of their time and dedication to the project. I hope to return for a future Chingu project.

I hope this was a fair assessment of the project, and would welcome feedback from any of my teammates.

What Always Gets Me...

Clifton Hill — Mon, 04 Jan 2021 21:39:49 +0000

Invariably when I am trying to do something that is new(ish) and that I don't understand it entirely, when I look up how to do it I run into the overly common roadblock of finding advice from experts that gloss over some necessary details.

30 minutes pass (sometimes hours!) then finally success is achieved after all of the various permutations of what could have possibly been missed in translation are tried and finally...I have the results I need.

sigh

And then, of course, I don't help the situation (because time is fleeting) by leaving those needed clarifying tidbits for the next wayward code newbie on their journey of finding an answer to their problem.

Tallyho.

React Error: Can't resolve module (not found) in React.js

Clifton Hill — Thu, 17 Dec 2020 17:20:27 +0000

Do you have the import line for your React module correct, but getting an error in console?

import App from "./components/App";

For me, I had the input correct but npm start can be buggy. If I move files to different folders, npm start doesn't pick up on these changes. I need to cancel npm start process, make the move, save and then run npm start and it will see the files now.

Not a problem! Except for all of my pulled out hair in the process...

Things Always Break When You Run

Clifton Hill — Fri, 11 Dec 2020 20:15:17 +0000

Trying to learn a new skill deeply, with a family to support, in 2020 of all years, while networking with others and job hunting, well...it was bound to happen.

I had my Linux VM setup on my Windows machine. Was doing all of my development and training on Linux, when I lost months of notes, files and projects.

I suppose I had it coming to me, working in Linux was something I only started at the end of 2019 because that was how Hack Reactor taught (either on a Mac or Linux). Finding this out mid-stream meant I had to setup Linux in a hurry, and I didn't bother with a backup option. (I'm really not that sloppy.) Months ago, I had tried to connect my Linux VM to my home network USB HD drives, but I could find no solution there, so I went back to the grind, crossing my fingers it would all be okay.

I must have uncrossed my fingers at some point.

Still not sure what happened, but it would appear that all of my changes were lost since the prior Snapshot taken on Virtual Box. The worst part of it all were the copious notes I had taken during my learning process.

But, as it happens, Win 10 is working just fine for web development, and I won't be developing in Linux until I have a moment to get that network problem figured out and back up like I should have done from the beginning.

Learn from me and don't wait 10 months to backup your work and end up losing 6 months of notes.

Chingu: A Team Project, At Last!

Clifton Hill — Fri, 11 Dec 2020 19:43:32 +0000

As a mostly self-taught web developer, one of the biggest challenges was finding people to work with as a team. When I started my coding journey in earnest I was focused on Hack Reactor's program and believed in the success of their model.

When I left Hack Reactor I felt confident in finding all of the resources I would need to deeply learn Full Stack Javascript development, and I did...mostly. Finding available teammates with similar skillsets and available time has been one of those problems that I knew would be tricky, but I had no idea HOW difficult it would be.

Yes, I've heard all the advice about finding bugs on GitHub to make fixes for, correcting ReadMe's, or volunteering to help an existing project elsewhere, but everything I ran across seemed out of my experience level. Perhaps I should have picked something and stuck with it. Ignoring the discomfort, and learning through it regardless. But, perhaps, I approached the problem with too high of an expectation on myself.

Imposter-syndrome sapping the walls of my confidence.

A number of months ago, a developer at a MeetUp made the suggestion of Chingu. I listened, thought it sounded almost too good to be true, and then became very skeptical when it involved paying about $30/month to be placed with a team and guided through the experience. Surely it can't be that easy. There had to be some catch. Some scam?

But as time went on and new connections continued to not mesh up with me for the kind of pair-coding, or team project that I needed, I realized I had to give Chingu a try.

And now, after 6 weeks, I wish I had tried it months ago.

I should give a full breakdown of the experience, but that will need to be another post.

(If you're familiar with Hack Reactor, you may be aware they have a mentor, of sorts, that you work with. Well...I was never able to find a mentor on my own. Not yet. They do exist, and I was focused on finding someone in my social network for free, but in the end it looks like I should have just found a mentor-for-hire.)

Diving Into Web Development

Clifton Hill — Fri, 11 Dec 2020 19:00:00 +0000

You don't know me. I'm new.

I'm a guy that loves to create. I write fantasy novels, and sometimes make art. Starting out, I attacked everything with an enthusiastic vigor that didn't consider that my career of choice, or at least one of convenience, wasn't really the right fit long term.

Despite now knowing that, leaving a long-held career in finance for something new, has been a topsy-turvy ride I've had to question the sanity of. But each challenge brings greater clarity. On the horizon, the path that I've set myself on years ago, is starting to come into focus.

I'm excited to find that destination, and knowing that it will evolve into yet something else, further off on the endless horizon, is more exciting still.

Sometimes we make mistakes in life, but we can learn, and those lessons all come together to make us who we are today.

It hasn't been as easy of a path as it could have been. But it was my path, and I am who I am today as a result of it.

No regrets, just lessons learned.