Let’s Build A Web App! Week 20 of my 30 week web dev journey
This is my weekly update on my project status (and it will be one of my most concise since I’ve left myself a short time to write it!) If you’re interested in the rest of the posts in this series, check out my other stories to read more about my web dev efforts :)
What did I set out to do?
I’ve been hoping to wrap up the reader module of moshimoji for a while. Given what I’ve already done in the past few weeks, that would mean implementing the data models and fetching for the reader module (Graphql schemas for the backend, Apollo-related code for the frontend). Also, I’d want to wrap up PRs 10 and 11 (mostly code refactors) to send to my mentors for review.
What did I get done?
I spent a lot of time compiling code questions to send to my mentors, adding documentation to my code, adding prop type validation, and making other cosmetic updates to the code in PRs 10 and 11. The pull requests are about ready for review, but once I wrapped those up, I decided to focus on redeploying my current code base, both for myself since it’s about time to get my deploy process finalized, and for my mentors to have something to relate to my code. Unfortunately though I refamiliarized myself a bit with my long neglected servers (ec2 instances), I ran up against an error with deploying new Docker for AWS stacks on Cloudformation, so I didn’t make much real progress there and may have to resort to using my existing stack for the time being till I figure that out.
What didn’t I get done?
Non-cosmetic progress on my code base for the site! Which should probably be my priority at this point.
What went well?
Working with others (thanks to my study buddy Elaine Y! ✨) helps keep me more focused. I also found that Slack works pretty well for Kanban purposes and keeping track of my questions so that I can compile them easily after a period.
What was difficult?
Figuring out that my code changes weren’t being reflected by my hot loading server as long as a compiling error popped up (was this always the case and I only recently realized this? Or have I broken something?). My continuing difficulties with being willing to skip over steps to bring my code up to par for review (which means I haven’t been implementing the graphql side of things for the reader for 2 or 3 weeks!). But that difficulty isn’t the only thing to blame — I also had spotty focus this week as I tried to attend to errands outside of school that I’d ignored last week, so I worked a lot less than I should have. So work life balance, as usual.
Ive noticed that logging my questions as I code helps me focus on still getting features done without having to stop all the time to pose a question to mentors, but the downside of that approach is that my mentors might have to slog through more questions to answer at once.
What would I do differently next time?
If I feel compelled to catch up on errands I’ve been ignoring in favor of my project, designating one day max for that in a week.
Be more conscientious about my diet so I can avoid getting tired after meals (and napping).
Continue to work with productivity partners.
One cool thing I learned about
While refactoring my code I’m realizing there are different ways of achieving the same end, and that one pattern of composition (that I naturally assumed) is an alternative to another (which may be more canonical). I’m sure this situation happens all the time when you code but it’s nice to get a firmer grip on patterns when it comes to conventions with React components.
