Learning IT like a Girl!
The LearnIT Girl journey has been an amazingly enriching experience for me! Now when I look back to who I was before those 3 months, I realise that I have learnt way more than what I had expected from this program. I did face a lot of challenges during these three months: from struggling to install a particular software, to getting stuck at a minor error for days; from juggling between college books and laptop, to managing time before my exams; but paving my way through these challenges is what made this a great learning experience indeed!
I remember the initial time, when I was finalising the timeline with my mentor and he used so many terms which I had never even heard of before.
I was so scared and was sure that I wouldn’t be able to understand the purpose of even half of them, set aside working on those platforms! I remember that when I started this journey, I was not even confident in giving commands on Linux, but now having done that every single day during those three months, I certainly have a much better grip and confidence now! It feels like a great achievement to have worked on all the platforms mentioned in the timeline. I certainly have grown a lot, thanks to this program.
One thing that has surely been ingrained in my mind is that: ‘Google always helps!’ Earlier, I had only heard my dad and my sister say this, but during the course of this program, my mentor reinforced this and I actually realised it. :P
Now, I am more confident about handling errors as I have learnt how to go about fixing the errors which come up along the way. I have learnt to manage my time efficiently, to focus both on college academics and the project work.
The mentoring process has been excellent. Whether it was the issues I faced while installing various applications or the challenges I faced while coding, my mentor always helped and guided me about how I should go about fixing the errors. He has been really supportive and provided me with some great tutorial links. Whenever I got stuck at any point, he helped me resolve the issue by providing useful resources, to make me learn to fix the errors on my own. He has also always been open to answering my doubts at any point of time. I would really like to thank Rahul Sir for being a super-awesome mentor and dealing with each of my doubts so patiently! :D
There had been times when I was so frustrated that I didn’t want to even open Android Studio, forget battling with my errors and finding a solution. But, then there were times when you could see the sparkle in my eyes and the grin on my face when a particular thing that I had been working on for days finally worked!
So overall, it has been a Roller Coaster ride for me: I faced ups and downs, but it was certainly worth all the thrill and it was indeed overwhelming!
I would like to wholeheartedly thank the Learn IT, Girl! team for providing me with the opportunity to learn such amazing things!
And well then, on the day of the results, this mail made my day:
And then thisss ❤
About the project:
Android Application: Offer a Book
This app would serve as an avenue for philanthropists /donors, who want to spread the light of education and kindle lives by gifting money for books that are needed by the underprivileged schools and also provide an opportunity to the senior students, who might like to gift their pre-owned/used books to the junior students from the poor section of the society. The very same pre-used books may help uplift the lives of many eager but poor students, who may not have the resources to buy such expensive books.
To briefly sum up my journey:
Being completely new to Android platform, during the course of this project I started from scratch by learning the basics of Java language, Git and Android framework (from Udacity Android Beginners Course); building along some android projects on my own. I learnt about and practiced app deployment, and even set up an echo GET request server on the NodeJS app. I built an android project and imported Retrofit to show response from the echo server. I familiarised myself with Postman services after building end points to the server to make requests via Authentication Token. I learnt about maintaining the login sessions using SharedPreferences. Improving the UI of the app for also an interesting part of the journey and I really enjoyed it. For the final app, I have written the backend api endpoints server in NodeJS and hosted it on AWS server using EC2 Cloud Computing. I have used MySQL database to store data. Goodreads API has been integrated to autocomplete book search and fetch the response. Also, Google Places API has been integrated in the app to auto fetch location.
