Student Spotlight Saturday:

“I heard about WTA a few years ago while reading an article on KSL about coding boot camps and women in technology. At the time, I was playing with the idea of learning to code, but was nervous about jumping in. One year later I bit the bullet and applied for the course…so glad I did!”

Lauren Brown

I caught up with Lauren and talked with her about the experience she had at WTA and one of her favorite projects.

In college, Lauren studied business management and modern dance. After graduation she got a job working as an Academic Program Manager for the University of Utah. Even though she never pursued a degree related to math, she remembered feeling like her brain picked up math concepts well. Over time she wondered if programming would be something she might both excel at and enjoy. She joined World Tech Academy in September 2015. Prior to WTA she had no coding experience and had never considered a career in tech, but her intuition was spot on. Lauren’s programming capacity grew exponentially as she was in the course. She is a perfect example of learning how to learn. Now the instructors challenge her to implement a new concept in projects and she researches the concept, teaches herself, and then implements it. Midway through the course she started running the website at her current job and started doing freelance Wordpress sites. She is currently building a web app for a start up.

Checkers

The checkers project is the first big project in the course. Prior to checkers most projects can be finished in a few days or a week, whereas checkers can take more than even a few weeks. You may be thinking “Checkers is a child’s game, it can’t be that hard, can it?”. I challenge you to think through all the different situations to consider:

• Only jumping pieces of the opponent?
• Double jumps?
• When a piece becomes a king?
• Keeping track of who’s turn it is?

And this is just scratching the surface. Often once students complete checkers they feel that they can tackle almost any other project.

Checkout Lauren’s current version of checkers: http://worldtechacademystudents.com/laurenbrown/checkers/

Below are a two examples of how Lauren masterfully handled some tricky edge cases:

I asked Lauren some questions about her experience building Checkers. Her responses were awesome.

Thoughts about the project overall?

It was an amazing feeling to finish checkers! I made my husband play it with me over and over when it was done haha. Highlighting the correct cells and jumping pieces were huge wins on this project. Accomplishing the hard stuff makes all of the hair pulling worth it!

How would you rate this project on enjoyment 1–10?

10! I learned so much during this project. It is so fun to actually play your checkers game once it is finished!

What aspects of the project did you enjoy?

The thing I enjoy most about all coding projects is the satisfaction you get when you FINALLY figure out a problem that has you stuck for a long time. There is nothing better than that! For this project in particular, it was so great to see the game actually working — correct moves being highlighted, pieces jumping over each other and showing up in their respective piece prisons, etc.

What new concepts did you learn while you worked on the project?

So many. This project is definitely one in which I felt my coding skills improve the most, but I seriously learned the value/skill of debugging and stepping through the code in Developer Tools.

What were some of the most challenging parts of the project?

I think this was the first project that dealt with pretty difficult logic. Thinking of all the different edge cases, move options, and jumping pieces was definitely challenging.

Did you get stuck on one part forever?

Oh man, checking and highlighting all available moves for a particular piece that was clicked was super tough.

How would you rate this project on difficulty 1–10?

At the time of working on the project, it felt like an 8. Now, looking back, it wouldn’t be quite as high. It is so rewarding to look back and see how much my skills have improved!

If you could go back and redo/refactor anything what would you do?

I would probably work on breaking my code down into smaller functions and clean up repetitious code.

What advice would you give to someone just starting the project?

Expect some serious growing pains with this project and don’t worry about getting stuck! Keep chipping away at a problem or bug and you will get it!

It is common for student developers to fall into a trap of feeling their projects are “good enough”. It is the finishing touches that often take the longest. I am very impressed with the effort and time Lauren spent polishing her checkers project. The finished result is not just a functional checkers game, it is a piece of art. If you’re interested in seeing how she did it, check out her code on Github: https://github.com/laurenhb/Checkers

If you have any questions about how Lauren’s code works feel free to reach out to her by clicking on this link: LinkedIn, or leave comments below.

Happy Coding.

Steven Dewey