Code Clan Week 4

Hello week 4!. My my time is flying by at full speed x10. I'm officially 1/4 of the way through my Code Clan journey literally in the blink of an eye. It's really weird to think that only 4 weeks ago I couldn't even comprehend what I am doing now. I also had a realisation that I made the right choice joining Code Clan as I cant actually imagine not doing this now. I knew I wanted to do it before I applied obviously but it's a weight lifted off your shoulders when you know you made the right choice. It is a sacrifice, it is SUPER hard, my life is literally code, sleep, eat, repeat but I know if I put the work in it will all pay off.

Day 1 - Principles of UX design.

I felt really at home with this stuff today. I learned quite a lot of it from my University days so I had a great start to the week. for all of 5 seconds I actually felt like I knew what I was doing!! Although I learned much more. The Rules of UX

• keep it simple
• make it accessible and inclusive
• Design with Data and understand context
• build digital services not websites
• keep your users happy and informed
• consider environmental and societal impact
• test and iterate
• be mindful of data

Find the best way to achieve your goal. coming up with photo-personas

user journeys and constraints that can be attached to certain projects.

It was all really inspiring and enjoyable and made you think deeper about how services are designed.

Task - We were to complete the above for an app that someone would use to track the health of their pets. In a group of 3 we imagined a Mum with a family who works full time but likes to adopt dogs and keep track of their health for her own reasons. She had a Labrador who are known to put on weight as they grow older. We were going to add a weight tracker, food intake tracker and exercise tracker. We wanted it so everyone in the family could access the one account to update if they took the pet out for a walk or fed it. It was really interesting to see all the micro steps that you miss when describing things.

Day 2 - Into to Sinatra

Oh my! What a day. Our task was to create a calculator, our first Sinatra app. Weirdly its named after Frank Sinatra... but anyway.. This was the stuff i've REALLYYYY been looking forward to... yes I enjoy ruby but i like to see things working in pretty ways not just on the terminal.

you can see in the URL how to get the calculator to work 'first_number = 10/second_number = 5' and they return 2.0 as i've changed it into a float which means it will give me a whole number and a remainder if there is one and not just a whole number. We also got to play around with some CSS!

Homework - Rock, Paper, Scissors

I still have a hard time with the logic of writing code. Once I start I tend to find my way but it's the starting I really struggle with. The homework was hard to get my head around. I need to relook at loops and if statements as I'm not really understanding them fully. I know when I should use them... but not how to use them properly if that makes sense? also to my joy.. more TDD... its not the bane of my life anymore but I still don't like them!

It was great fun to be honest. Once I got started and finally got it working It was quite fun to do. I'm going to play around more with the CSS but i'm just happy to have completed it!

Day 3 - RESTful API's one to many relationship.

code along was to create a pizza shop . Create Read Update and Delete orders from customers that are on the system. The update and Delete ended up being the Lab in the afternoon.

It was really tough today, again it's the logic thats completely stumping me sometimes. I really struggled on the Edit and Delete during the lab.

We also got to play again with some CSS. This time using grids. I like the layout. It's not great with regards to the colour scheme but again it works and that the main thing.

Homework tonight was just going over the solution to work on understanding the concepts. I really didn't understand Edit or Delete so I asked one of the instructors to go over them one to one with me.

Hoping for a much better day tomorrow.

Day 4 - Many - to - Many relationship / PROJECT DAY

many to many relationship which was just a follow on from yesterday, quick run through and was shown an example of a cool Zombie app, but moving on to the most exciting part of the day.

PROJECT BRIEFS GIVEN!!!!

I have chosen to do a gym app where the gym manager can see what clients have booked what classes, see a list of what classes are available, add clients remove clients update client information and the same with what classes have been booked.

I'm not going into too much detail as its the planning stage but I am really excited about starting my first project. after they were given out I think everyone in my Cohort really overthought the whole process. I had ups and downs the whole day from feeling extremely overwhelmed at the task to feeling like I could take on the world.

tonight was actually our social as well, which I really needed. I needed a complete distraction from the project and to just chill out. I had paper and diagrams coming out my ears so to sit and play Cards Against Humanity for hours really helped me (thanks to members of my cohort who didn't actually know they helped me a lot at the time). It wasn't until I was walking to the train station to get home I got a complete overwhelming feeling of "wow... ok I overthought that! thats what I need to do" but I didn't go home and throw open my laptop. I went to sleep

Day 5 - Project week cont.

So I've continued planning my app out which is cool. 1 hour of planning can save 4 hours of coding so I'm all about the planning! I came in very positive ready to tackle the web app. we also had a class on managing change and how to handle negative feelings which to be honest some may think of it as a complete waste of time but it really helped me! Ive always had a bit of an underlying feeling of I totally do not belong here but after that I know I do. I deserve to be where I am and I will take every opportunity to enjoy this.

After lunch I was ready to create my database... the scariest part of it all was actually starting the project. Creating the database completely helped me overcome that anxiety cause now i've started, I can just continue. No big deal right?

and hey presto... look at that! 1st test passing! TAKE THAT WEEK1 ME!

Overall this week has been tough but I am glad to get to start my own project. Obviously It's not finished yet... so Ill keep you updated next week but Im like a different person today. I'm excited and happy and anxious and nervous but i've planned it within an inch of my life so i'm ready! and by next week I'll have my first working app that I did all on my own!!

above is an accurate description of me right now after my first test is passing ON MY OWN!