Forem: jdesola

Back to Basics...

jdesola — Sun, 15 Nov 2020 16:09:36 +0000

This is a short one..

So as I sit here, late on a Saturday night working on my side project, I realized how important the basics are. Now to be fair, this is something I think about often: in Taekwondo, in cooking, in guitar, in singing, and now in coding. I'm reminded at how often I've practiced the basics in Taekwondo. I'm a Third Degree Black belt and there are plenty of times where I practice things I learned as an early student, because it helps.

Where am I going with this?

I've been struggling over the last few weeks to really get started on my side project for a few reasons:

It is kind of a daunting project: I'm redesigning not only my taekwondo school's front-end for the check-in system, but I'm also redesigning the database structure and a new student portal.
I have had literally tons of ideas on how I want this to go, but they get lost and I overcomplicate things.
I've been jumping too far ahead and designing phase 2, 3 etc. features. Rather than sticking to the basics and just designing phase 1.

I was talking with a friend today who is interested in being a DBA and when I sat down to log our notes, I realized how much I've jumped the gun, so instead of taking down our notes verbatim, I'm writing up all the entities that we need to be concerned with in the database. Once I have that I can really get going.

So all of that to say, don't forget the basics. Sometimes you just need a whiteboard or a Google doc before you worry about how everything is going to fully work.

Ohhh we're (over) halfway there

jdesola — Mon, 09 Nov 2020 16:52:35 +0000

What, halfway?

Ok, so I'm a little behind on this. We had two "mini" capstone projects essentially back-to-back and that didn't allow me to get to this. This is going to be a long post since I'm catching up!

"Mini" Capstone Two

My pair partner was AMAZING, I couldn't have asked for a better one. I feel like as we get through the cohort, everyone keeps getting more laid back and collaborative. He kept me on my toes and made me really think about the "why" around doing certain things.

In this project, this project we used the following new-for-us technologies:

Spring JDBC
PostGreSQL
Integration Testing

We brought these together with Java 8 to create a Venue Management System. The purpose of this system was to check reservations for spaces within venues, allow a user to search for a space, and then make a reservation.

"Mini" Capstone Three

This was the most recent one and it was A BLAST. Again, my partner was absolutely fantastic. She made sure I remembered the little details since I was starting to lose them. She was also very witty and kept things light when I maybe started to stress.

The new-to-us technologies that we used in this project were:

RestFUL APIs
Spring Rest

The goal of this project was to make a Venmo mock app that allowed a user to send money to other users and request money from other users. Requests needed to be approved by the requestee.

Today

At this point we're a little past halfway. Today starts Week 9 and Module 4: Front-End Development. The last 8 weeks have been challenging but in the best sense of the word. I cannot put into words how much I've been able to learn and how much fun it really has been.

I've been most excited for this module because I've received feedback from managers in the past that I have an "eye" or "natural ability" for UI/UX design. While all aspects of coding really do play on your creative abilities, this plays on visual creative abilities.

The next few weeks will focus on HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Then we have two weeks to knock out a final capstone project that brings together all of our new knowledge.

Consistency

A concept that I've appreciated over the past several weeks has been that of consistency. Not only consistency in a schedule or a routine; but consistency in how one does things. I've found that I'm learning this stuff so much better than 10 years ago (this story to come in another post) because of how consistent the learning experience is: both for how I'm taking notes/studying and how the material is being presented to me.

There is also an aspect of consistency with how I approach the problems presented to me. I've found that I tackle a lot of these problems the same way, and I think that is one of the reasons why things have become easier for me/I get through some things faster.

This also makes me think of a saying my Taekwondo instructor says to us all the time: "Perfection does not exist. Instead of practice makes perfect, consider, consistent practice makes progress."

Importance of Socializing

Amidst everything going on: election, pandemic, cohort; the last thing most people probably are thinking about is socializing. Something I've come to realize over the past several months is how much of an introvert I am not. I always thought I was, but I'm probably more of an extrovert with some introvert tendencies or an ambivert. With that said, I decided to take a small risk and have some of my cohort-mates over to my house for a socially-distanced barbecue.

It was a lot of fun. People seemed to enjoy getting out of the house (even the introverts), meet others from our class, and just take a break from everything going on.

I'm definitely planning on having another hangout of some kind. Hopefully there will be pictures. I was able to snap this one of my dog and a friend's (mine's the little one).

Side Project Status

I'm still working on the martial arts school program. I'm currently still data modeling the different entities/classes. Luckily I have a good friend who participated in a SQL bootcamp and is interested in database design, so he is going to help me make sure everything is accounted for.

Once I wrap that up, I will start thinking about the different APIs needed for the two different systems consuming the data: the Student Portal and the Check-In System.

Once I have that done I will design the front-end for both systems.

Updates to come on that and hopefully will have some things to show next time. I'm also considering writing about my "learning to code failure" next time as well.

Coding for a Career

jdesola — Mon, 12 Oct 2020 15:15:16 +0000

The Road So Far (Weeks 1 - 4)

All I can say is "Wow". The last 4 weeks have flown by (I still can't believe it has been a month already). Running my energy levels to reserves almost everyday has been exhilarating, in a way (I'm crazy, I know). My pairs have been amazing and I can't thank them enough for dealing with my quirks as we work together to solve various forms of FizzBuzz and calculators.

Now, as my instructor said this morning as we began module 2: "Congratulations on finishing module 1, you're all Java developers now". We wrapped up with a capstone that utilized all of the knowledge we gathered over the last month (more on that below).

Linking Up

This last week's career assignment was to work on our LinkedIn profile. Now, I've had a LinkedIn probably since 2014, maybe a bit before, but I've never put much effort into it. Just the bare minimum.

We were told to refactor our information, make some new connections and join some new groups. As I worked on this, I realized how out of date some of my information was. My summary did not include anything since 2016, I hadn't filled out anything regarding my cosplay business, and my cover photo was the default.

I was also in several groups that didn't matter to me anymore. So I left/unfollowed them and found some more relevant to my current interests and passions ( I was even able to find some martial arts and cosplay groups! )

I write all of this to say: Check your LinkedIn! People do really use it for recruiting and hiring. It's worth it to stay updated with it, even if it is just a little bit a day.

Cap it off!

Speaking of running my energy levels low. This capstone was something else. We had to design a Catering System that handled all different kinds of processes, audits, and transactions. We worked in pairs for this specific project.

I couldn't have asked for a better pair partner. She was understanding, collaborative, and easy going the entire time. She kept me on my toes with remember how specific (or not) we needed variable names. The use of variables in certain areas to keep the code readable and the use of whitespace for the same.

We wrapped up pretty quickly, but she was more than committed to constantly looking at the code and testing; caught several bugs over the weekend; and made sure to pull me in to fix them as opposed to fixing them on her own.

We are very proud of the software we shipped and are looking forward to more projects over the next 10 weeks.

...Looking Forward (Weeks 5 & 6)

This week and next we are working on module 2, where are learning to work with SQL databases. I've worked with SQL lightly before, but not in a capacity like we will be. This will be completely new and I'm excited for it. Bring it on.

Side Projects and Ideas

In my (lack of) free time, I've been looking for a side project to work on. My "problem" is that I want this project to relate to my passions. Now some of these could be really easily: display a recipe from a text file; make a PokeDex that reads a text file (makeshift DB) and display information on a selected pokemon; etc. However, I tend towards more complex projects (a blessing and a curse).

I've been wanting to create a new check-in system for my taekwondo school as well as a student portal. Both of these will require a database backend as well as a desktop app/web app front-end, respectively. Another idea has been to create a tournament management system.

I would LOVE to create something for my cosplay work, but haven't figured anything out yet. Got any ideas? Please throw them my way.

So, my "problem" has been trying to land on a side project to work on now. Without any of the knowledge I'll be gaining later. I wouldn't mind teaching myself some more of this to get these projects going, however, with the amount of time/energy I have committed to the course load (as well as, you know, life), I'm not sure I have the ability to learn those other things right now and will need a project that either builds into those or just something like to keep me fresh.

And here...we...go...

jdesola — Tue, 29 Sep 2020 13:31:21 +0000

Introduction

Who Am I?

You know who I a...actually no, no you don't. I'm Josh and welcome to the crazy life that is attending a coding bootcamp. I'm 28; live in Columbus, OH with my Cats and Puppy; teach Taekwondo; cosplay; and many other things that will probably come up in some later posts. I hope I can give you a sense of what it is like to attend something like a coding bootcamp as well as a sense of who I am over the next few weeks.

Coding Background

I've been working in IT for about 9 years now. That is a broad subject area: My path was as such Help Desk -> Business Analyst/Project Manager/Product Owner -> Product Owner/UX Designer. While working on the Project/Product side of things I was exposed to some light coding and reading code, but didn't do much writing or gain a full understanding of it. In January of 2020 in preparation for a job interview, I took a Udemy course that focused on JavaScript/CSS3/HTML5 and that was the Beginning. Since June, I've been working on a Bachelors of Science in Software Development from Western Governors University. In September 2020 I started as a student to learn full-stack development in the Java language with Tech Elevator.

Coding Bootcamp

Current Status

I just started Week 3 of this 14-week bootcamp and I've got to say while it has been fun, it has been a whirlwind. Being unemployed since February, I've been able to take some...liberties with my daily schedule, so coming back to a proper schedule came easier than I expected, but not as much I would have liked it to.

Even with that being the case, I have loved every minute that I have been involved with Tech Elevator. I'm learning new ways to think about problems; nuances of the Java language versus C# and JavaScript; and that I CAN do this (maybe in a later post I'll go into this, but I always thought that being a developer was very much out of my grasp). The staff have been extremely helpful as well as the other students.

It truly is amazing to see how even though we're remotely learning together, even though we have varying levels of experience and personalities, that we can all come together to help each other.

And Finally...

I look forward to cataloguing this journey and sharing my experiences with you.