AppLoading is a useful component offered by Expo, so be sure you’re using Expo to create your React Native app before you follow this advice.

When AppLoading Comes in Handy

If your app depends on any asynchronous response, AppLoading will be useful for you. My app uses AppLoading in the ‘App.js’ file because I use fonts that require loading. If my app’s components render immediately, they could try to use fonts that have not loaded yet. Here we can use the AppLoading component with certain props to accomplish a few things:

• Keeps the loading screen up until a different component is ready to render
• Starts an asynchronous…

Post Bootcamp Priorities

The period between finishing a Software Engineering bootcamp and landing that first job is difficult. There’s really no straight path unless you have a job lined up right away, which is rare. Part of the difficulty is prioritizing your time because there are many things to be done: applying to jobs, networking, creating projects for the portfolio, learning new skills, improving the skills you have, contributing to your Github, etc…

There have been plenty of times during my job hunt so far that I briefly ignored one priority to pursue another. I let a few too many days go by without a commit to my Github, and it wasn’t because I was being lazy. With that said, my career counselor stressed the importance of consistently committing to my Github, because it looks much better that way when recruiters look at it. …

If you’re finding the above result when you try to access your website on Google Chrome, this article might hold your solution. First I’ll outline how I discovered my issue, and how I traced my steps to find the root source. Then I’ll explain the simple solution that will work for you if your issue stems from the same cause as mine.

Works on One Browser but Not the Other

I recently finished retooling my website with a responsive design, so I pushed the changes to Heroku where my site’s deployed. When I visited the site on my iPhone’s Safari browser, it looked just like I expected. But I typed in the same URL in my iPhone’s Google Chrome browser and saw the error from above that says “This site can’t be reached…server IP address could not be found.” This lead to frantically checking my website on both browsers on all the devices in the apartment including my girlfriend’s iPhone. I type the same “choowatchin.com” …

Warning Sign

There are plenty of warnings in your DevTools console that show themselves even when your app seems to be working fine. These are helpful, and it’s always a good idea to heed these warnings to make sure they don’t bite you later. I have a solution if you find a warning similar to the following:

Learning About the ‘Internship’ Opportunity

There’s a weekly newsletter for Flatiron School grads that offers advice and resources to assist in the job search. A link to the opportunity’s information page was included towards the bottom of the newsletter.

It’s advertised as a virtual internship, but their policy states that the program may not be listed as work experience. In resumes, it must be included under ‘Extracurricular Activities’, ‘Certifications’, or ‘Achievements’. LinkedIn references to the program must be in the ‘Licenses and Certifications’ section. The policy provides the wording that must be used in any reference and nowhere does it include the word ‘internship’. …

So far my job search hasn’t involved much suiting up. I graduated the Flatiron School Software Engineering Bootcamp in January and officially began my job hunt March 2. By the end of the month, everything in-person, from meetups to interviews, was cancelled thanks to the Coronavirus pandemic. Most of the job search process was online anyway, but now it’s entirely online. In order to qualify for the money-back guarantee from Flatiron School, I follow certain guidelines set forth by the program.

I’m thankful that I was pushed to follow this process, because the structure has kept me active and sane during this time. More details of the program conditions can be found in the link above, but I’ll outline the main goals for software engineers that I strive to accomplish each week to remain eligible for the money-back guarantee and more importantly to ultimately secure a job where I can grow my skillset. …

The react-router-dom package is great for rendering different React components based on the url path. Therefore, React components can lead to others by changing the url path. This article covers the ways we can do this with ease, but first it might help to quickly cover the basics of React Router.

React Router Basics

First, we install the package in our react app using the following command: npm i react-router-dom. Now we can import the tools from react-router-dom in whichever components we plan on using them. I import three tools from react-router-dom in my ‘App.js’ file with the command: import { BrowserRouter, Route, Switch } from ‘react-router-dom’;. Now I have access to a <BrowserRouter> component, a <Route/> component, and a <Switch> component. BrowserRouter surrounds the other components and keeps them in sync with the url. …

If you plan on giving users the option to create accounts for your application, you’ll be implementing authentication and authorization. Authentication checks that the user logging in provides the proper credentials (matching username and password). Authorization comes after authentication; once we know we have a certain user, we decide what they have access to.

My application uses React on the frontend and Ruby on Rails on the backend. We’ll take information from the user on the React frontend, but we send it to the Rails backend for authentication and authorization. BCrypt is a password hashing function, and it assists us with authentication. JWT allows us to encode and decode tokens; this is integral to authorization. …