Post + Half-Post

Is that a math equation? Should the title really just be Half?

I was committed to a post every two weeks. Week 2: Successful. Week 4: Successful. Week 6: Successful. Week 8: Nope.

A couple things to cover — I’ll split by topics:

1) TIY Hackathon:

The hackathon was a pretty awesome event. Friday night, dinner was provided and CodeSmith came in and pitched ideas for 4 different app ideas. The cohort was then split into eight different groups — so each app idea would get two different solutions. My group was selected to create an app that roommates could use to set up a bill share program. Check out DuckBills for all your billing solutions! But really, we had a lot of successes couples with a few failures across the weekend — but overall, the team was proud of the product we were able to create in <48 hours of work.

2) End of Formal Classes:

Since I last wrote, we tackled AngularJS. I’ll share my sentiment/comparison between Angular & Backbone (however accurate or inaccurate it may be). Backbone/React seems like it would be awesome if I were a rockstar with all the basics in the JS world. I am definitely comfortable with javascript — but don’t consider myself a rockstar just yet. The possibilities to be very specific in everything you create and the ability to build from scratch is definitely there in Backbone. But, I think that is the downfall for Backbone (in my perspective).

Angular on the other hand seems a little friendlier out of the box. There seems to be a lot more functionality built in and ready to use. The work flow feels much more familiar and because many of the basic functions are already defined and documented in the form of custom directives…I feel like it is easier to jump in to without as much of a perfect understanding of javascript basics. My standing as the musician playing coffee shop gigs (think rockstar analogy) has made Angular much easier to get along with as far as MVC’s go.

So, tying up with Angular was a welcome experience following the poor experience with Backbone. As I made what felt like my 10th instagram clone and 500th list app in a new language/framework/other_coding_term_here, it was nice to see a light at the end of the tunnel and begin thinking about final projects.

Our group has decided on a glorified grocery list app for our final projects. The core functionality of the app will offer the ability to share the list with a group of users. The app will also allow users to set up their pantry at home. So, if items are added to a list that are currently in the pantry — the user will be notified. Additionally, we hope to include recipe functionality. So, if a user says they want to cook a specific meal, the app will cross reference what is in your pantry and add the necessary items to the grocery list. We have currently have too many ideas and theories of what this app will become, you’ll have to wait and see for demo day what the final product actually becomes!

3) Portfolio Work:

We are the lucky group taking the course over Thanksgiving -therefore we get a week off pre-final project time. A week off. The past few days I have spent what feels like more hours than usual reading through angular documentation and setting up the beginnings of my WebDev portfolio. It’s awesome because it is my own project. There are no cut and dry rules of what my portfolio has to do or look like. But, it sucks because each little facet that I want to add in to show my skill or creativity is of course harder to implement than I think it will be from the start. But, because I commit to it — I have to finish it and figure it out. Thanks, StackOverflow, CodePen, and Tim.

— — —

I think this sufficiently counted for 1 + 0.5 Posts.

Next week only counts for 1/2 post and then I’ll be back to regular.