FOOD HUNT

FYI: The APIs for this project have become outdated since the build, so the recipe and restaurant search are currently not working. Sorry for the inconvenience! Hopefully one day I can come back to this and update the code, as well as work on some remaining to-do features. Feel free to clone the repository and work on it if you would like, as it is likely only the API integration that needs updating.

This application was my first independent exploration of React.js and HTTP requests. I took this opportunity to learn more about making API calls and about React features, like React Hooks. My motive behind this approach was partly to determine whether I would be able to program something more than a static website independently, but mainly, I wanted to confront a fear I had about APIs, which I had little knowledge and experience with utilizing before this project.

Challenges

Having only a superficial knowledge of React during the development period of this application, my use of lifecycle methods sometimes produced unexpected results, like infinite rerendering due to my API calls. Fortunately, my persistence and patience allowed me to keep testing possible fixes and overcoming bugs.

Memories

During the development of this project, I was surrounded by other software engineer students. Seeing others work on their passion projects inspired me to keep working harder. Their encouragement helped me overcome my doubts and fears. They helped me to be the software engineer I am today.

A particularly fond memory I had was hopping around many different coffee shops to work on this application. With a fellow software engineer and my laptop in hand, I focused on building the restaurant finder component of this application. Many times that day, we celebrated each other's small successes and acted as each other's rubber ducks, which nothing out of the ordinary for us. What struck me about that day was the sense of satisfaction I felt from what I imagined was a typical day in the life of a programmer.

Reflection

The process of developing this project was satisfying. I am a visual person and I particularly liked to inject some of my personality and fun in the small details of my application, like the current mood indicator.

This project has potential to improve. With more time and experience, I would love to work on the mobile version of this application, to allow users to order from a restaurant through the restaurant finder, and to build out a backend that would allow users to save recipes and favorite restaurants.

THE CENTRAL LINE

This was my second ever website and independent coding project, so it will always have a special place in my heart. This website covers research I gathered myself on the New York City Subway system, some of which were hardcoded like the trivia generator and other games on the features page of the website. While it has no backend, I was able to create a fun and interactive experience that is responsive to several devices with a little jQuery and JavaScript.

Challenges

As a novice developer when I created this project, I knew little about best practices and creating DRY code. While I understood flexbox and Bootstrap, I was not fully aware of how to best implement those available tools. Instead, I found "hacky" workarounds, like how I used jQuery to take the window size and make the website display accordingly, and ran with it. It may not have been the most elegant and clean code, but for what I knew then, I am quite proud of what I was able to produce independently.

Leadership

While I was creating this project, I was around a group of novice developers like myself, who were all working on personal projects as well. We took this opportunity and time together to work on a website as a group. I was appointed as tech lead for a small group of five novice developers like myself, and together, we redesigned a website for a program which brought us together. From this experience, I not only developed my programming skills further, but I also strengthened my interpersonal skills, the most important of which was communication. I gained more perspective on how to lead others and what approaches I can take to resolve issues that may arise when working with many developers at once.

Reflection

I have grown so much since I first worked on this project. I now have other approaches and tools available to me to create a responsive website. If I could change anything, I definitely refactor my code so it follows the DRY principles and provide more interactivity and functionality for users, like allowing users to click on a station and learn a tidbit about that station and providing a forum for users to discuss the information presented and add some facts of their own.

CURRENT WEATHER

As the name suggests, this application provides current weather depending on the zip code input, utilizing the Open Weather Map third-party API and JavaScript. This application was created to fulfill an assignment, but it energized me so much that I fully designed and deployed it even though it was not asked of me to do so.

Challenges

The roadblock during the development of this application was converting the sunrise and sunset response from the API response to a familiar time format. Before this application, I rarely used Date methods and had no familiarity with Unix timestamps, so Stack Overflow and Google were called to lend a hand.

Enjoyment

This project was a joy from start to finish, because I love being able to employ my frontend design skills and create a visually appealing product. I know that I was only able to play with the code in that manner because the Open Weather Map API was well-designed and its documentation was quite precise and clear. This made me appreciate software engineers who create these APIs and value the software technical writers who write the documentation so beginner developers could easily utilize the API and learn from the experience.

Reflection

I love how calming this project turned out unexpectedly was from development to its current production state. If I had an opportunity to further improve this project, I would wish to be able to provide future daily or hourly forecasts for users and associate the weather information with images displayed, like the background image changing to reflect the current weather or forecast.

NYC READS 365

NYC Reads 365 is a citywide reading initiative aimed at encouraging children to take the time to read. Since I have a deep love for reading, I wanted to practice my coding skills on something practical and important for users. I chose to redesign a government website, because unfortunately, many of such departmental websites are not the most visually appealing and its content are not easily accessible, and I thought I could help with that.

Challenges

The challenge in the development of this website was the accordion bookcase. I had difficulty putting content on the spine of these books and preventing the content from shifting other books on the shelf. It took a lot of trial and error to allow the books and everything associated with it, like the animation, to be responsive to different devices.

Enjoyment

I loved children's books and the idea of fostering a love of reading in students so that they can love reading for pleasure as much as I do. That personal investment in literacy and the program spurred my progress and motivated me to research free literacy resources that could benefit users.

Reflection

Given an opportunity, I would love to further develop this website by providing a backend to make the form functional and developing more interactive features, like reading games, so that the website is more than informational. Something I particularly wish to do is to track and share students' reading progress and goals in order to develop more of a community for readers and motivate participants to read.

Increadible

Increadible is my first independent full stack application. This application is a tool for users to post reflections related to a targeted goal to accomplish in mind. For example, a software engineer may use this application while developing a feature to better understand and commit to memory the learning occurring in the development of this project feature. This could be beneficial for daily standups on agile teams and when returning to one's code after a period of time. Additionally, the application has a wikipedia search feature and cat fact generator, when the user just wants to learn something.

This application uses React.js, Java (Spring Framework), PostgreSQL, and third-party APIs. If the "Live" button is available and displayed, the application is currently active and deployed on Amazon Web Services with Docker. If you are not able to see the deployed version of this application, I apologize but I just do not have the funds to keep the application running indefinitely. You may, however, clone my project repository and play with my application on your local machine by following the instructions on the readme file.

Challenges

The challenge in the development of this application was working with Docker to package my application into a microservice. My application kept crashing when spun up with Docker, even though it was fully functional as a monolith previously. As I was and am relatively new to Docker and using microservices, I kept trying different solutions and configurations. A great deal of dedication and research went into the build process, so I was ecstatic and proud when it was fully functional and deployed.

Enjoyment

During the build of this application, much of my time was spent alongside several software engineers. While we were not working on the same project or features, I loved being able to support, debug, and bounce ideas with these passionate software engineers. As this was built before I ever officially worked as a software engineer, this build gave me an addicting taste of the role.

Reflection

Looking back to this project, I am amazed at all that I was able to accomplish and how far I have grown professionally and technically to this point and afterwards. Before this application, a full stack application was quite intimidating to me but now I know I am so much more capable than I could have ever imagined. I will always think of this project fondly and remember the sweat, tears, and laughs that surrounded and went into it.