Coding Bootcamp: Project Three

This project was the toughest I had to do. This was the first time in the bootcamp where you are expected to work with a group to complete a project. You are given a prompt from a "company" and expected to complete a full product within three days. My team was given the prompt to create a site that a user can create surveys and also take other surveys from other users. Simple right?

We implemented an agile work flow. To begin we spent an hour planning out how the back end was going to be laid out and the drawing out the wireframes. This was the easy part. We had agreed on a plan of actions and divided the team into two groups. One starting the front end and the other starting the back end. I am stronger on the back end so that's the first thing that my team and I decided would be best for me to start.

My partner and I spent all day using Express.js, MongoDB, and Mongoose to set up the back end, in a pair programming work style. As a team we had decided to have a four documents. The user, survey, questions, and answers. As a user you would own your survey and the surveys would own their question, and finally, questions would own their answers. This way you would be able to have a user build their own surveys.

After the day was done there was still a lot of work that needed to be finished on the project so I stayed behind to finish so in the morning we had a working back end. After testing and making that pull request I went home.

During our morning stand up the group brought up the idea of doing a 'Would you Rather?' format of survey. So instead of having a survey with multiple question and questions that have multiple answers we decided to have one question with only two answers.

This was the major learning point for me. I had spent so much time and energy making a back end that works in a new technology for me. I was experiencing the something that I like to call 'my precious code syndrome '. At this point I had to take a step back and realize that the group has made a choice and is going in another direction and it doesn't matter how much time that I spent coding this feature.

We knew what we needed to do and with all the practice my partner and I had the day before we were ready to get this new back end up and running. With a plan in place we were able to complete and test a whole new back end in 2 hours.

The take away from this is that I learned very quickly that even though you spent all your time and energy on something that does not mean that, that the code is going to be either liked or needed. In that I also learned as a developer you need to adapt very quickly. Pivot and turn out something that you are equally proud of.

You can view the deployed project at: https://the-full-stack-pancakes.github.io/survey-front-end/

You can view the repo at: https://github.com/the-full-stack-pancakes/survey-front-end

Like what you read and feel like I'm a fit for your team? Check out my portfolio at: https://ejparnell.dev/