Code Like Her Weekly # 9
By Sami Chakradhar
My passion for programming started during my school days, where we used to learn QBASIC. I adored the logic used to solve the problems, that’s when I realized and gained confidence in programming. With a dream of being a programmer, I joined CSIT as my bachelor’s degree but the course was quite different than I imagined, the course focused on the theoretical part more than the practical knowledge that I was looking for. To satisfy my quench, I researched and joined several online classes where I got to learn the basics of different technologies, but it didn’t fulfill my curiosity.
Knowing I wasn’t proficient enough, my exploration led me to Code like her fellowship which is the perfect platform where we can learn about web design and development in depth. With mixed feelings and hope to elevate my skills, I grabbed the opportunity to be part of Code Rush family.
For the past few weeks, we were brushing up our designing skills, JavaScript knowledge with having to design a website and daily Javascript projects. Following the process, we moved to ReactJs where we learned to build react app and the concept of components, rendering elements in DOM, props, and event handling.
We started our ninth week with an introduction to redux. Our mentor conceptualized redux as, “A predictable state container for Javascript apps.” We learned about actions and action creators, state, reducers, combine reduces and store, and how the state as a plain js object stores data. We were taught about the need to dispatch an action to change something in the state and action describes the change which finally, to tie state and actions together, we write a function called a reducer.
Afterward, we practiced the react-redux and react toolkit. Within react-redux, we used a connect function to extract data with mapStateToProps and dispatching action with mapDispatchToProps. We used provider function that allows the Redux store available to any nested components that have been wrapped in the connect function. Lastly, we moved towards redux toolkit. Here we learned about thunk, middleware, and slice also. We used Redux Thunk middleware to encapsulate asynchronous effects while fetching from asynchronous API. The kick-off of redux was quite puzzling as it was an unfamiliar topic for most of us. To get to grips with we were provided with recordings and a swarm of encouragement to put out.
As we finished the front-end part each of us was assigned the final project where we had to come up with our project using all the concepts that we have learned in the React and Design class. I chose to clone Netflix app as my project. Primarily I fetched the required data from API using the hook method. To split UI into reusable pieces and render element components and prop was used.
These past few weeks we have pushed ourselves to edges thanks to our mentors for bringing out the best in us! I feel so fortunate to have had an opportunity to be part of this fellowship. I have learned patience and task breaking strategies from mentors. The tasks assigned have allowed us to expand our knowledge and helped us build confidence in our abilities.
Being a part of Code like her fellowship taught me persistence is the key to accomplishment. And I’ll be forever grateful for this opportunity.
About the Author:
Sami Chakradhar is a student of Kathford International College. Currently studying B.Sc.CSIT in the 3rd semester. She has a keen interest in the field of web design and development, her thirst to learn more in the technical field has pushed her to enhance her skills and knowledge. She loves to participate in hackathons, workshops and has indulged in research and other projects. She is a diligent, enthusiastic, and motivated individual with a lofty aim of bringing a good change in society where life has become much easier and sophisticated with the help of different techniques.
“Things work out best for those who make the best of things work.” And with this motive, she has been moving forward in her life in order to learn, explore, and serve.
