My Journey Into Tech: Part 5 - From Front End Tech Explore to Plans for 2024

Introduction

Welcome to my fifth and last article in the series, taking you through my journey from the world of dietetics to development. So far, I’ve talked about everything from when I first wrote <h1>”Hello, World!”</h1> one year ago up until recent weeks. If you haven’t already read my other articles, you can check those out first, or jump straight in here if you like.

It is almost exactly a year to the day that I attended the first session of the Introduction to Web Development Course by Code First Girls. It’s also been almost exactly 6 months since I finished my full-stack software engineering bootcamp at Northcoders! In this article, I will focus on what I’ve been up to in the last couple of weeks, and so it feels like a very natural time to reflect on just how far I have come in my first year of coding, as well as share my plans and ambitions for the future.

Revisiting React, This Time With Type Checks

The last few weeks have seen me return to focusing on front-end development, armed with a whole new, deeper understanding of back-end development. I was honestly so excited to get back into using React, as it had been a few months prior that I had been using it to build my portfolio site. As part of my freeCodeCamp back-end development and APIs certification, which I recently gained, I built a small exercise tracker API. Although I don’t talk about my personal interests much in these articles, one of my main hobbies is exercise—running, cycling, and yoga are the main ones. So I knew while I was developing the API that I would love to make a client-side application for it. And so a couple of weeks ago, I started building my front end to integrate with my API.

Of course, the question is: when building your own project, what technology should I use to build it? I settled on TypeScript; having built multiple smaller projects recently in TypeScript and greatly appreciating its benefits. I chose React as the framework as I really enjoy building with React, and after a few months of not touching it, I was really excited to use it again. I chose ChakraUI as the styling library, as I haven’t used a component-based library before and wanted to try one. I also knew that it would work well with React, and I really liked the documentation for ChakraUI. And so, having chosen my tools, I began building out the front end of my application, trying to get to grips with types for my React code, as well as ChakraUI components, React Hook forms, and React’s Context API, all while trying to re-jog my memory of everything I had previously learned about React. If it sounds like a lot, it probably is, or at least it was for me anyway! Although my progress has been slow, it’s also been steady, and I’ve learned a lot along the way. My aim is to really deepen my React knowledge and to build an application that is of high code quality, robust, and has a great user experience.

What Else I’ve Been Up To

I’ve also been getting back into my Harvard CS50 course after taking a break from it to concentrate more on building projects. In the last week, I have been completing week 8, which is HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. It can be easy to be inclined to skip through this quickly, but I think as someone who is still very new to the software world, there is nothing that can keep us more humble than going back to the basics, plus I always learn something new from revisiting things or getting a new perspective on a concept. Or it might just be that a concept that previously I could only grasp theoretically, I can now understand how this fits into a real-life application or how I can integrate this into a project.

I’ve also spent a fair bit of time in the last few weeks speaking to people, whether it be fellow bootcamp graduates looking for work, recruiters, or developers in the industry. Everyone has their own perspective and advice, and I love speaking to people about their experiences and getting their insights. Sometimes living so far away from any city is very difficult, as I would love to be able to network in real life with people and attend events and coffee chats in person, but I have had great meetings online, and I remind myself of the great online communities I am a part of. Again, it comes back to one of my favourite things about software development and the tech industry in general: you can connect with people from all around the world. Although there are still many barriers that unfortunately exist for a lot of people, many of these barriers are reduced by the nature of the virtual world in which we can all connect, share, and learn.

Reflections and Future Plans

As the end of the year is nearly here, I feel naturally inclined to think about what the not-too-distant future holds for me. Apart from some very exciting news that I will be able to share soon, I will be spending my time hunkering down for the winter to continue to build on my existing skills in my current tech stack. With that in mind, here is a summary of my current tech stack, which also serves as a testament to how much I have learned and progressed over the last year, the majority of which has been in the last 8 months. My languages are JavaScript and TypeScript, and I have a solid understanding of Node and Express on the back end, and I have built and deployed projects with both SQL and noSQL databases. My interactions with SQL databases (Postgres) have involved writing raw SQL queries. For no-SQL databases, I have used MongoDB, with Mongoose as the ODM. For the front-end, I have a solid understanding of HTML and CSS, as well as JavaScript for DOM manipulation. On top of this, I have a front-end framework (React) that makes developing front-end applications even more fun and efficient. I can use react-testing-library and Jest to write unit and integration tests to make sure my implementation is as robust as possible. For styling frameworks, I have both a component-based library (ChakraUI) and a utility-based library (TailwindCSS), the latter of which has given me a very good ability to also style in vanilla CSS. I build mobile-first designs, scaling up to ensure everything looks great across all devices. I have a good eye for the user experience, including validation and user feedback, and an understanding of accessibility best practices.

As well as focusing on my tech stack, I will be spending some time in the next few weeks to finish my Harvard CS50 Introduction to Computer Science course and to spend some time thinking about what learning resources, project ideas, and materials I can use to continue to develop my skills in the next few months. I will also be attending my first IRL tech event, which I'm very excited about.

Conclusion

As I continue with this tech stack, I will be taking a step back from job applications until the start of next year, so that I have extra time to rest, recharge, and spend time with friends and family over the festive season. However, I‘m still more than happy to be contacted about opportunities, so if you are looking for a dedicated, motivated software engineer on your team who loves to learn and develop themselves, actively seeks feedback, loves people, and enjoys working as part of a team, I’d love to talk. Otherwise, I will be actively applying for jobs again from the beginning of the New Year, where I will be continuing with my quest to find a full-time role as a software developer in my current tech stack. In the meantime, I’ll still be active on LinkedIn for anyone who would like to connect, and you can look out for my Friday run-down posts of what I’ve been up to that week, which includes tech and some non-tech-related stuff too, just to keep it real and balanced and to remind myself and others of the importance of balance and self-care.

Whether you have read all my articles, one, or even just skimmed through a paragraph or two, I am really grateful. I also want to say thank you to so many of you who have reached out to say how useful it has been to read about my experiences. Although it's incredibly helpful for me personally to be able to type out my reflections and experiences, it is very nice to know I’m not just speaking to myself. Please continue to reach out to me, whether publicly or privately, about your experiences, questions, and insights; it really means a lot.

Thanks for reading!

Nicole

#opentowork #juniorsoftwaredeveloper #selfdevelopment #fullstackdeveloper #myjourneyintotech #mysoftwarejourney #codefirstgirls #webdevelopment #northcoders #softwarebootcamp #codingbootcamp #freecodecamp #typescript #react #chakraui #tailwindcss #frontenddevelopment