Welcome to my 100 Days of Code challenge repository! This space documents my journey through the challenge, including daily updates, reflections, and links to resources and projects. Throughout this challenge, I' aimed to improve my problem-solving skills, learn new technologies, and become a better programmer, one day at a time.
Today I practised problem solving and planning by completing Katas on Code Wars. Whilst these challenges continue to strengthen my problem solving and planning skills, what has noticablly improved for me this weekend is that I now use technical terms appropriately and I have a greater understanding of how powerful JavaScript actually is. I have been learning map, splice, split, join and reduce.
Link to work: https://www.codewars.com/users/KelseyBaker262
Today I learned about Quality Assurance. I installed Vitest and built test files to test functions. I learned about the three A's (Arrange, Act and Assert) to help structure my tests. I put the 3 A's into practice and learned how to throw errors! Additionally, it was great to learn real-world examples of why testing is so important (the Horizon Scandal) and their human cost.
Link to work: https://github.com/SchoolOfCode/bc16-w6-d1-workshop-unit-testing-week6room4
Today myself and my team at School of Code continued to learn about quality assurance and was introduced to Test Driven Development. We created a test to fail, then created functions to pass the test and finally refactored our code. We also explored the Eisenhower Matrix to discuss how to prioritse actions and tasks and finished the day with an insightful talk on QA from the co-founders of Loupe Testware, James Fairclough and Linford Copeland.
Today I had a talk from Nadeem Shabir and Darren Arbon from Technology from Sage who shared their experiences of quality assurance and Test Driven Development. In the afternoon I learned how to use Vitest and Supertest to test API route handlers and helper functions. I took extra time to learn how to write the tests myself which helped with consolidating our knowledge. The highlight of my day was watching my team mates eyes brighten and laughter break out when we were impressed with how effortless Playwright's extensions helped formulate the tests. Everyday I'm amazed with how powerful the software is and I'm excited to continue learning its capabilities.
Link to work: https://github.com/SchoolOfCode/bc16-w6-d3-workshop-e2e-testing-with-playwright-KelseyBaker262
Today I began planning my project, which was to create a Codewars-inspired kata. This was intended to put my quality assurance and testing skills into practice. I'm happy with my level of planning and creating tables for Equivalency Partitioning, Identifying Boundary Values, Designing Test Cases, and Decision Tables.
Link to work: https://github.com/SchoolOfCode/bc16-w6-hackathon-make-a-codewars-challenge-KelseyBaker262.git
Today I continued with my project by building my tests and functions. I was able to create working tests and functions, and I'm happy with my final product. Next time, I would keep my kata story and testing simple and, if I had more time, add error statuses.
Link to work: https://github.com/SchoolOfCode/bc16-w6-hackathon-make-a-codewars-challenge-KelseyBaker262.git
Today I refreshed my knowledge on JavaScript fundamentals. The more I consolidate my knowledge and understand each component's function and purpose, the easier it will be to write code and build my knowledge base. I spent time on Exercism and Codecademy and completed a few more katas on Codewars. My favorite kata of the day was created by my peer Timothy Bridge. It was creative and fun to complete, and reminded me to pay attention to detail. Initially, I only included the summation of Chris' flies, but I had to do this for Tom's and Cat's too!
Link to work: https://www.codewars.com/kata/65f361be2b30ec19b78d758f
Today I refreshed my skills on semantic HTML, CSS Grid, and Flexbox. As an audio and practical learner, having articles read aloud and playing games that practiced Grid and Flexbox was really helpful. These topics felt more familiar to me than recent back-end and JavaScript topics, as a HTML/CSS challenge of recreating the Airbnb website was a pre-course challenge for School of Code.
Today I expanded my knowledge by learning about media queries and mobile-first design, and was able to recreate a site ensuring that it was device responsive. I feel more comfortable with front-end tasks. Understanding the steps needed to make websites work is starting to piece it all together for me.
Today we continued with a School of Code workshop where I learned about React and put it into practice. My team created new files to store different components and CSS, learned how to use props with arrays, and explored why using IDs is important. We're close to finishing the CSS changes for desktop. I'll proudly show our site tomorrow, as we noticed our energy dipping and decided to take a break and return tomorrow.
Link to work: https://github.com/SchoolOfCode/bc16-w7d2-workshop-vitereact-boilerplate-week7-room15.git
Today I began using NextJS and learned about pages and layouts. Having lots of files can get quite complicated quickly, but having everything in separate components is overall better for reusability.
Link to work: https://github.com/SchoolOfCode/bc16-w7d2-workshop-vitereact-boilerplate-week7-room15.git
Today I learned about state, useEffect, and useState, and implemented them into my FirePlace Palace project by introducing buttons and a menu. I struggle with linking these concepts together, so I need to plan more in-depth and practice to become more familiar.
Link to work: https://github.com/SchoolOfCode/bc16-w7d2-workshop-vitereact-boilerplate-week7-room15.git
Today I continued learning about state, useEffect, and useState, and implemented a review section into my FirePlace Palace project. While it was tough at times, the sense of achievement from finishing the project with my team made it all worthwhile. We presented this to our peers and it went really well.
Link to work: https://github.com/SchoolOfCode/bc16-w7d2-workshop-vitereact-boilerplate-week7-room15.git
Today I consolidated my knowledge and understanding of React by using the React Visualized resource. As a visual learner, this helped me a lot. I was able to see state, rendering, and other aspects clearly.
Link to work: https://react.gg/?s=visualized
Today to cement my knowledge of React, I used various resources: Codecademy for lessons and exercises, many YouTube videos, and I reviewed the workshops from last week. I created a list of things I felt most confident with to help direct my weekly studies. I feel ready to begin a personal project to integrate the new concepts I learn every week.
Link to work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rh3tobg7hEo
Today I continued to cement my knowledge of React by creating a React flashcard website with my group. I was introduced to forms and passing functions as props. Forms are such common features on websites, so it felt good to learn about them and gain more skills and experience for my personal project.
Link to work: https://github.com/SchoolOfCode/bc16-w8d1-workshop-react-flashcards-week7-room15
Today my team and I continued with our FirePlace Palace workshop, working with forms and learning about error messages and validation. This has been the week I've enjoyed the most at SoC, and I am feeling very engaged and motivated.
Link to work: https://github.com/SchoolOfCode/bc16-w7d3-workshop-nextjs-boilerplate-week7-room15
Today we continued the Fireplace Palace project and had a guest speaker at School of Code who spoke about their experience on a previous bootcamp and their experiences after the course. Our guest speaker gave a realistic and engaging talk, which was both inspiring and motivating.
Link to work: https://github.com/SchoolOfCode/bc16-w7d3-workshop-nextjs-boilerplate-week7-room15
Today we started a hackathon project where we refactored our useState in the Fireplace Palace project to useReducer. useReducer was difficult to grasp at first, but it was great to learn how to use it and understand its benefits.
Link to work: https://github.com/SchoolOfCode/bc16-w7d3-workshop-nextjs-boilerplate-week7-room15
This weekend, I began an e-commerce website project. I was overly excited to start, but I refocused and ensured that I planned well. I made a component tree to visualize each component and file, and found a website from a photographer I admire, using GoFullPage to break down their website into sections. As I began creating, I learned how to use CSS modules and why it's important to optimize images. I initially forgot to start with a mobile-first approach when breaking the site down on GoFullPage, so I adapted my plan to create a great mobile website first and then the desktop version. Film photography is a passion of mine, and this project will showcase and sell my photos. I've found myself becoming addicted to this project and feel proud to incorporate the photos I've taken 📸.
Today I continued with my e-commerce project and started using GitHub Projects to help keep track of planning and my todos. I feel like I'm learning a lot. For everything I try to implement, I then learn about many different things while building.
Today my team and I continued our hackathon project to learn about the concepts we didn't complete during the hackathon. Afterward, I spent some time exploring other gaps in my knowledge and working my way up from the fundamentals. I know that the better understanding I have of the fundamentals, the better my knowledge will be with other aspects, so I need to keep going.
Link to work: https://github.com/SchoolOfCode/bc16-w7d3-workshop-nextjs-boilerplate-week7-room15
Today I learned about user authentication and how to use local storage in my project. I implemented a login feature and created a user context. This was a bit challenging, but it was satisfying to see the login feature working. I look forward to adding more features like user roles and permissions.
Link to work: https://www.codewars.com/users/KelseyBaker262
UX/UI week has begun at the School of Code! We started off the day reflecting on last week and delivering face2face peer feedback before having an insightful talk from Olivia Winteringham who shared so many helpful resources and great insights. Then we delved deeper into agile and product led teams and discussed questions which would help us identify these teams when interacting with companies.
Link to work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3VRz18ntjQ https://www.svpg.com/product-fail/ https://www.svpg.com/product-vs-feature-teams/ https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/what-silicon-valley-gets-right-on-software-engineers/
To continue UX/UI week we learned about the 5 stages of Design Thinking: Empathise, Define, Ideate, Prototype, Test. To explore empathise and define we learned a range of different qualitative and quantitative research methods that we can use to understand a problem and our users.
We were able to create two personas that represented our user's from different perspectives. We then explored the ideate and prototype stages as the research and personas will lead us to a solution that is multi-faceted and will work for both cases.
From this, our team learned that not all problems are what you originally hypothesise. It's so important to listen to user's needs, problems and opinions and to keep their say at the forefront of product design.
Link to work: https://www.figma.com/file/ZAb9h4rurs6woKrSZZFTUO/Product%2C-UX%2FUI-Week-Tasks-(Community)?type=whiteboard&node-id=0-1&t=N6vQhKHEmWm8TMQM-0
Now we've passed through the Empathize, Define, and Ideate phases of the Design Thinking framework, today we started on Prototype. We began by taking our research findings and new problem statement and used Disney Ideation to start exploring ideas for a solution.
After finalizing a solution, we learned how to use Figma to convert our solution into a low-fidelity framework. I really enjoyed seeing our solution come to life by creating the framework and learning about how useful a tool Figma is. We also kept in mind important tips like contrast and balance to create an appealing design.
I took some time to familiarize myself with Figma even more and used the new things I learned today on my e-commerce project. For example, I used the Colour Contrast site, which explained that my font and background did not pass accessibility tests, and therefore I changed my font to black to accommodate this!
Link to work: https://www.figma.com/file/ZAb9h4rurs6woKrSZZFTUO/Product%2C-UX%2FUI-Week-Tasks-(Community)?type=whiteboard&node-id=0-1&t=N6vQhKHEmWm8TMQM-0
Yesterday, we ended the product design week with a Researchathon. The goal was to learn how to explore a new topic and how to clearly share that learning with others in a presentation. My wonderful team, Nada Shetty and Chari Cruz, and I chose to explore the component library Material UI. It was great to do our own research and share our knowledge, and the challenge of recording ourselves definitely pushed me outside of my comfort zone.
I really struggled with time management and delegation this week and feel like our final product was not as polished as I would have liked it to be. However, what I am really proud of is that weeks ago, I would have been very disappointed with myself, and self-doubt would have crept in. But my mindset has completely shifted over the last three weeks, and now I feel glad that I did it and have taken away a lot of knowledge, tips, and reflections to better equip me for next time.
Link to work: https://youtu.be/-WQ_94Pgyxc
Today, Timothy and I planned to meet up for some component practice, and it turned into much more than that. It was like a mini-agile session where I showed him the very early stages of my e-commerce site. The feedback and tips that Timothy provided me really helped improve the quality of my project, and I can't thank him enough!
We started the process of looking into Atomic design, which focuses on designing systems of components. This involves breaking down a page into reusable components. For my e-commerce site, this involved creating a logo component that uses props to pass data between the parent element and the child element so I could reuse my logo on different pages but still be able to have a unique width depending on the page. Finally, we used flexbox to allow for a responsive welcome page, and Timothy taught me some great tips on SVGs.
Today I spent the day recapping manipulating the DOM by watching Web Dev Simplified on YouTube and going through the School Of Code learning material. Previous bootcampers have mentioned that things don't start to click till week 8/9 and its so true. I definitely feel in a place of familiarity with concepts now which makes recapping flow more easily and I am able to learn the things that felt like too much information many weeks ago.
Link to work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y17RuWkWdn8&t=100s
Today has been the start of DevOps week at School Of Code! I began by only knowing a simple definition but with great explanations from the coaches it eased us into the concept very well! We then spent the day researching, installing and exploring Sentry (sentry.io) and I was impressed by it's capabilities and tools.
This afternoon, myself and Timothy Bridge explored the basics of TypeScript and learned how to declare and intialise variables, implement functions, declare a new type that describes an object and declare a new type alias!
To continue with DevOps week we had an amazing training day from Rafael Tanaka and Adrian Lai from Jetstack Consult about Docker. They did very well to break down a difficult topic and their workshops are very well put together. Whilst learning Docker in a day is very challenging as there are so many new concepts, I have taken away an overall gist and have ideas on best practices such as not being in root and not using too many layers.
Today we had inspiring talks with Lizard Morrow from Santander UK and Manu Magalhães from Smart Pension. Both are School Of Code alumni and were very open with their bootcamp and job seeking experiences. Manu's positive energy and passion for DevSecOps shone through and Lizard demonstrated how his genuine interest and care for accessibility is incorporated into his role. Today we also focused on AWS Quest where we learned about the services available on AWS (EC2, S3, RDS, VPC and Cloudfront).
Link to work: https://explore.skillbuilder.aws/learn/course/external/view/elearning/11458/aws-cloud-quest-cloud-practitioner
Yesterday we had an employability session with Victoria Meah and Andy Jones. I'm feeling very thankful for their continuous support and it was evident that their wealth of experience and knowledge will be incredibly valuable to myself and my fellow bootcampers as our job hunts begin.
I spent my evening supporting the School Of Code pre-course live session. It was fun to experience the course from a different perspective and contribute to the selection of the next cohort of bootcampers!
Today I learned about infrastructure as code with Terraform and began to create a portfolio page. I had a chance to explore my GitHub Student Pack which offers lots of great learning resources for free and was introduced to working with domains, GitHub Pages and Netlify.
Link to work: https://developer.hashicorp.com/terraform/tutorials/aws-get-started/infrastructure-as-code
Today I spent time working on my CV. Getting the right balance between being clear and concise, visually appealing and demonstrating all of my new knowledge from School of Code is challenging but I know how helpful it will be in my journey as a transition into tech.
Link to work: https://www.canva.com/design/DAGHX_Q5Kmg/u3036kinYnbZen0k_FzdFg/edit?utm_content=DAGHX_Q5Kmg&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=sharebutton
Today I spent time improving my knowledge on TypeScript. Its a superset to JavaScript but adds type checking to ensure more robust and maintainable code
we started cyber security week at School Of Code where we were introduced to so many different and interesting topics by lots of guest speakers from Microsoft and Synack. These topics include Threat Modelling, OWASP top 10 security risks and Microsofts Digital Defense Report 2023
Link to work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=605&v=VYClC7mmQCI&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Flearn.schoolofcode.co.uk%2F&source_ve_path=Mjg2NjY&feature=emb_logo, https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/security-insider/microsoft-digital-defense-report-2023, https://owasp.org/Top10/
Today we explored authorisation and authentication throught Supabase. We followed online guides and set up auth in a existing repo and ensured that the keys were secure in the env file.
Link to work: https://supabase.com/docs/guides/auth/quickstarts/react, https://supabase.com/docs/learn/auth-deep-dive/auth-deep-dive-jwts, https://github.com/SchoolOfCode/bc16-w11d2-workshop-auth-week11-room8
Today myself and my team practiced React and TypeScript skills by planning and building a weather app. Whilst I am still a beginner and this task was given a very limited time frame, we did not make as much progress than I would have liked. I am certain that with enough time and effort I will continue to make progress within the project and improve my skills.
As I get further into the bootcamp my motivation, optimism and determination increases and after today's session I took a break and spent my evening doing more research and refining the plan. With this clearer direction I'm going to come back to the project over the weekend. For now, its time for bed!
Link to work: https://github.com/SchoolOfCode/bc16-w11d3-workshop-typescript-react-weather-app-week11-room8.git
Today we learned about the approach of being secure by design. This means building with security at the forefront and beginning of any project. I learned about Git Pre Commit Hooks such as Husky, Prettier and ES Lint.
One of the best ways to learn is to teach others! This week our hackathon involved using our knowledge of TypeScript and creating a written tutorial. It really challenged me to think about how to communicate and display information and what I can implement to help people learn effectively. I chose to create my tutorial for people with no prior experience of TS and who's learning style can be described as a 'hiker' (people who enjoy gradual learning journeys).
I enjoyed the process and found it very helpful to review my peer's projects and gain feedback. I plan to publish my tutorial but before then I am going to edit it by adding greats things that I learned from my peers such as: providing tips for the practical task to support people if they get stuck and to space out the content to improve readability.
Link to work: https://www.canva.com/design/DAGCxS3NgCE/Xi_CTKFnK8kvUEbSz7pXUA/edit?utm_content=DAGCxS3NgCE&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=sharebutton
Today I applied for my first ever role in tech. It definitely pushed me outside of my comfort zone as it is an application and assessment process that I have not experienced before. I feel like I have learned a lot today and regardless of the outcome I'm happy to be on this journey. Some things that I am proud of is that lots of the skills and tips that School Of Code has taught me came naturally and definitely helped strengthen my application. For example, when asked about how I would get to know a team and explore how they would support me, I delved into asking how they practice psychological safety, support each others learning and working styles and are able to pivot and adapt as a team to ensure the success of a project.
Spent the day sat in the garden soaking up the sun whilst I updated my cv. Thank you Timothy Bridge and Rhys Postans for the feedback as it gave me lots to think about and improvements were definitely made :)
Link to work: https://www.canva.com/design/DAGHX_Q5Kmg/u3036kinYnbZen0k_FzdFg/edit?utm_content=DAGHX_Q5Kmg&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=sharebutton
Today was the beginning of AI and data week at the School Of Code. I chose to learn prompting and used my new knowledge to continue working on my revised plan for the weather app workshop. The combination of prompting and breaking down some examples help me to write some components and props. My code has A LOT of pseudo code because this project will act as an example for future projects. Once complete I'm going to test myself by continuing to practice components and props on my e-commerce personal project 🌻
Link to work: https://github.com/SchoolOfCode/bc16-w11d3-workshop-typescript-react-weather-app-week11-room8.git
To continue AI and data week at the School Of Code we explored natural intelligence. This is where algorithms are optimized by mirroring biological evolution. Were were introduced to terms such as population, fitness, crossover and mutation and discussed how this relates to AI
Yesterday I finished off the weather app workshop that I had been wrestling with. I broke down the components and have a lot of pseudo code describing each part so I can use its fundamentals in future as a reference. Then I spent the rest of my day learning more about React on Codecademy!
Link to work: https://github.com/SchoolOfCode/bc16-w11d3-workshop-typescript-react-weather-app-week11-room8.git, https://www.codecademy.com/learn/react-101
Today myself and lovely team engaged in a group session on Python fundamentals using Scrimba as a learning platform. We then discussed and practiced our learnings on Programiz's playground.
Pre bootcamp learning Python used to feel like a daunting journey but now I feel more comfortable with it because I know other languages and there some familiar concepts. I'm now equipped with the skills to feel more comfortable with being uncomfortable, for example, by knowing what to do when I'm stuck and asking the right questions and knowing how I learn best.
Link to work: https://v2.scrimba.com/learn-python-c03
Today's hackathon was a 2 minute presentation showing my fellow bootcampers what self-learning I had completed that week. I included a summary of everything that I have learned over the past few days and also some LinkedIn tips that I learned to support with finding employment.
Today I spent more time working on my CV and I contacted a company that I would love to work for to introduce myself. Even though they did not have any job vacancies at the time for junior developer roles, I am interested in continuing to build my skills and relationship with them for future opportunities.
Link to work: https://www.canva.com/design/DAGHX_Q5Kmg/u3036kinYnbZen0k_FzdFg/edit?utm_content=DAGHX_Q5Kmg&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=sharebutton
Today I used Scrimba to continue learning TypeScript and working on my e-commerce site. I wrestled for hours trying to make progress on my e-commerce site yesterday and came away feeling like no progress was made. I take solace knowing that hopefully some learning was made in the struggle and today I approached my day with more structure and and planning which has helped me progress.
Link to work: https://v2.scrimba.com/learn-typescript-c0l, https://github.com/KelseyBaker262/photography-e-commerce-site.git
As I begin the second half of the 100 days of code challenge, the final projects at the School Of Code has begun! I met my wonderful team Albert Szupszynski, Winnie, Jose Luis Quinones Castro, Jules Smith and Ayodimeji Akinbolude and we created a team manifesto. We were given the project brief and time to prepare for our meeting with our stakeholder tomorrow.
Exciting times ahead 🚀
Today we had our the first meeting with 3 of our stakeholders. This was a great opportunity to get to know them and delve into their problem. We were able to gain a variety of perspectives as we had the opportunity to speak to the organisation's leaders and users.
The complex information collected required lots of organising into themes, priorities and supported with creating user personas so we could keep our users at the forefront of our design and build process. Through Disney Ideation, the Eisenhower matrix and stand-ups with our peers, we will finalise our solution and define some clear MVPs.
Although our final idea has not been confirmed, there are a few key features which may form part of our solution so this evening I have taken some time to explore authorisation, user roles, payment features, threat modelling and progressive web apps ⭐
Link to work: https://www.canva.com/design/DAGDzFjavPA/AzdpoAJdMZ9Wfvzg9s1H3A/edit?utm_content=DAGDzFjavPA&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=sharebutton, https://www.figma.com/board/6xedai8KI4sia3DzDHiOE9/Planning%3A-Disney-Ideation%2C-Personas-and-MVPS?node-id=0-1&t=ZBTfsQSAZRUDyPtb-1
A busy day split between final project and great guest speakers! Maria Crawford gave a very down-to-earth and realistic talk about life after the bootcamp and Gosia Szewczuk and Jane Fallon shared the wonderful work that they do at Methods regarding the creation of user-focused products within government digital services.
Then our final projects continued where we began our daily stand-ups, retros, progress tracking on Jira, finalising our planning, decision making and solution idea so we could began making a prototype.
Today we finalised our idea for the final project and began to create a prototype on Figma. It was great learning how to use Figma as it is industry standard.
Link to work: https://www.figma.com/design/l0E2tWMfxn9X4ejdKx0lp7/Prototype?node-id=0-1&t=Y23MQFN3hByrUSSC-1
Week 1 of the final projects at School Of Code is officially complete! Tom Simmonds and Grant Klinefelter are some of the organisers of the Kings Heath Clangers community basketball club in Birmingham. They approached my team with the complex problem of needing to find an easier way to help them organise the basketball club's schedule, payments and communication.
After the initial meeting to explore the problem further our team has been busy with week completing the initial product discovery planning. This involved adopting a agile design process and doing the following:
- Empathise: Fully understanding the stakeholders
- Define: Being curious to define the 'actual' problem
- Ideate: Generating ideas through Disney Ideation, market research and creating user stories
- Conducting surveys and having a stakeholder progress meeting to gain quick and informative feedback
- Considerations: Designing with user experience and budget in mind
- Prototype: experimenting with potential designs and features
Its clear that Tom and Grant both genuinely care about the club and its members and our team are feeling determined to create a solution which can add value.
This project is about consolidating the knowledge that we have learned during the bootcamp and I have enjoyed taking a lead on stakeholder interactions and presentations, user stories and Disney Ideation.
Link to work: https://www.canva.com/design/DAGFZ7Zq-_0/L46SLB_GRnO8UB87lzCGRA/edit?utm_content=DAGFZ7Zq-_0&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=sharebutton
Today I made a few changes to my CV and met with Timothy Bridge. We started a side project of building a carbon emissions calculator. The School Of Code final projects are in full swing but we thought this smaller and slower side project would be a nice way to put our minds on something different whilst consolidating our core skills.
A main reason of the final project is to consolidate our skills and my team are making a great effort to ensure everyone is involved in all aspects of the project. However, when there are 6 people in a group, its inevitable that there will be a few things that I don't get a chance to complete so this project with Timothy Bridge gives me a nice opportunity for that 🌻
We started with conducting user research and sent out a survey.
Today I've enjoyed time with my family and made some changes on my CV after helpful feedback from Erin Smith 🌻
Link to work: https://www.canva.com/design/DAGHX_Q5Kmg/u3036kinYnbZen0k_FzdFg/edit?utm_content=DAGHX_Q5Kmg&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=sharebutton
Today I worked on the nav bar of my e-commerce site and am still amused at learning that the style of the menu icon is called a hamburger icon. I have the main functionality working so the nav bar styling changes depending on the size of the screen and when hamburger icon is clicked, it reveals the menu options.
I followed a YouTube video that was in vanilla JavaScript but adapted the instructions by making sure I could create the nav bar whilst using components, NextJs and CSS modules.
Next I would like to change the basic styling to match the design of my e-commerce site and fix a couple bugs. I have a gap under the nav bar when the menu options are revealed, the hover functionality isn't working properly and I need to remove the horizontal scroll.
After the bank holiday weekend myself and the team were feeling energised and eager to get back into our final projects. We had a busy day exploring APIs and rounding off the design and documentation. After a quick chat with Nadeem Shabir, he gave us a few insightful tips on small changes that we could implement which would have a big impact on the efficiency of the project 🏀
Today I skill shared with my team by explaining the benefits of CSS modules and demonstrated how to use it. We then started the build process where we are creating a calendar and the databases for user credentials and booking functionality
Link to work: https://github.com/lazycloud0/khc.git
Our team had a productive day and implemented our calendar component for our final project. We decided to use React Full Calendar for its easy integration with our existing repo and for its plugins.
Link to work: https://github.com/lazycloud0/khc.git, https://fullcalendar.io/docs/react
Our team had our first branching issue and myself and Albert Szupszynski were able to fix it with 2 minutes to spare before our demo with our stakeholders! We both learned a lot and our proud of our efforts. Our stakeholder is happy with our idea and progress and gave us helpful feedback on our colour schemes and branding
Link to work: https://www.canva.com/design/DAGEA7erRaA/qvwqvK0hAEyo19-ZSTtt5Q/edit?utm_content=DAGEA7erRaA&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=sharebutton
- I made a component tree for our project to help us all visual the file structure now we are all in build mode
- I updated our decision making rational to include our Git Hook decision making
- I met up for Timothy Bridge and continued to work on our carbon emissions calculator by reviewing the responses from our survey and adapting our plans to align with the users' wants and opinions
Link to work: https://www.canva.com/design/DAGD-kryLyE/Ev5bcmfDVX-paZIPX3rPSw/edit?utm_content=DAGD-kryLyE&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=sharebutton
Today I did some research on how to implement our event functionality on our calendar for our final project. Also, Myself and Albert met up to finalise our header and footer and I'm really happy with how it looks. I've become a little obsessed and feeling proud so I'm looking at our mobile site a few times a day
Link to work: https://github.com/lazycloud0/khc.git, https://fullcalendar.io/docs/react
Today I spent some time fixing some bugs, I learned about more about SVGs, calendar functionality and how to perform Get requests using Next.js and Supabase
Link to work: https://github.com/lazycloud0/khc.git
So proud of the resilience and determination of my team today! We had a slow start yesterday but Ayodimeji Akinbolude did an amazing job of realigning the team's goals, Jules Smith picked up everyone's spirits with a great game for our energiser, Winnie L. helped guide the back end team to success today, Albert Szupszynski created a form with great error handling and validation and I have been able to fix some bugs. It's my turn to create a fun energiser for tomorrow and I'm ready to make it a fun one 🏀🏆
Link to work: https://github.com/lazycloud0/khc.git
Today myself, Albert and Jules worked in the Login/Sign Up page on our final project. Jules sourced the code from material UI and then I added more styling which ensured brand consistency with the rest of our website.
Link to work: https://github.com/lazycloud0/khc.git
Friday's always mean another stakeholder meeting regarding our final project! We shared this week's progress, demonstrated where this meant we were up to in relation to our MVPs, gave a demo of the product, shared our sprint 4 goals and gained any feedback from our stakeholder!
Link to work: https://www.canva.com/design/DAGFaNJXm_A/9Y_muyvWOrV58vzgLo4AhA/edit?utm_content=DAGFaNJXm_A&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=sharebutton
Today I started to plan the About page for our website. Our project stakeholders sent over photos, videos and content of what they would like included on the page and I organsed this and explored the different ways the implement this on our page. We decied to go with a 'tile' design to keep the information in clear sections
Link to work: https://www.kingsheathclangers.me/about
I reviewed the About page information and media that I organised the day before and drew a rough wireframe of what this could look like in desktop view. I then created the page and components files in our repo and began to add the JSX to the About page component.
Link to work: https://github.com/lazycloud0/khc.git
Today myself and Ayo worked on the OnClick functionality of on the calendar of our project. We were able to follow the docs to get this working but then struggled to get the individual events to render a new page specific to that event. Albert then joined us and as a collective we were able to get this complete today!
Link to work: https://www.kingsheathclangers.me/whatson
Whilst our backend team was exploring logins with supabase, the frontend team were exploring how users can sign up to games and training sessions. We were able to hardcode a login and send that information to our attendance table in our database.
Link to work: https://github.com/lazycloud0/khc.git
Today we had some really helpful advice from Nadeem from Sage and he discussed what a final product should look like. As a team it was taking us longer than we would have hoped to implement logins. One reflection is that next time we would start with logins but for the purpose of a 3 week project, starting with the calendar functionality is a good idea. So we decided to temporarily stop our login functionality to be able to focus on adding final touches to what we have built already and creating an amazing demo say presenation. So the frontend team then went back to the hard coded functionality and created a name and email address sign up which would act as a temporary fix to having no login accounts yet.
Link to work: https://github.com/lazycloud0/khc.git
Today we spent time preparing for our stakeholder meeting tomorrow, discussing as a team what the future holds for this project and rounding off any outstanding tasks ready for demo presentation prep in the next few days.
The final projects really have flown by! Friday's always mean another stakeholder meeting and it's the last one! We shared this week's progress (which was a lot of functionality and has put us in a good space), demonstrated where this meant we were up to in relation to our MVPs, gave a demo of the product, discussed the next steps between the team and Kings Heath Clangers and gained any feedback from our stakeholder! Our stakeholder has also kindly offered us free merch tops as a thank you.
Link to work: https://www.canva.com/design/DAGGIQZuZPY/kzCI0N-e-77Y4_cdb5IjNg/edit?utm_content=DAGGIQZuZPY&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=sharebutton
As a weekend task for the final project I used the user persona and user journey research work that our team had completed during the first week of our final project and redesigned it into a bite-size and presnetable which would be easily understood during our final presentation.
Link to work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2DT-UdjQ9U
As a weekend task for the final project I completed a Google Lighthouse Accessibility test on our website. Each page was scoring between 94% and 98% for each page. This was the first time doing a Lighthouse test and it was interesting to learn about ARIA labels and colour contrast.
Today our final project team practiced and recorded a first draft demo day presentation video. This was then submitted to School of Code to gain feedback from from the coaches
This morning myself and final project team met up to work on our final project for Kings Heath Clangers. We were able to refector and improve the JSX and CSS code for our forms so the CSS was no longer overridding each other and the forms styling worked well in mobile and desktop mode. In the afternoon, we received the first draft feedback from the School of Code coaches and then discussed as a group how we could implement this.
Today myself and my team chose what we would like our website to look like in terms of styling and branding and divided all of the outstanding tasks between us all. We then spent the day completing them so the website was presentable for demo day.
Link to work: https://github.com/lazycloud0/khc.git
Today myself and my team began used the feedback that we gained from the coaches and implemented this into our demo day presentation. We tried a few different ways to record the demo and ended in recording it separately and editing it together as Jules in our team has video editing skills
Today myself and my team recorded our final demo day recording which will be sent to any potential employer who isn't able to make it to demo day. Afterwareds, I had a meeting with my mentor Dom, where I showed him our demo day prerecording and he gave valuable feedback.
Link to work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2DT-UdjQ9U
It is a bank holiday this weekend so I spent the morning continuing to create the About page for our project website and then spent the afternoon at the beach! I was able to add all necessary information, style each container and learn how to embed 2 YouTube videos on the story of Kings Heath Clangers.
Link to work: https://www.kingsheathclangers.me/about
It is a bank holiday this weekend so I spent half of the day at the beach! In the evening I logged into School of Code's learning platform and make progress towards completing the Project Launch Experience course. This is where I learned updated regarding the course and demo day, gave feedback on guest speakers and my mentor.
Due to illness within my team we did not practice our demo today, but myself, Ayo and Albert still came together to work on the About page of our Kings Heath Clangers website. We learned how to build 2 image carousel and style them. After, we placed them into our About page and used Grid for the first time in the project to create a logical and organised layout for the desktop version of our webiste.
Link to work: https://www.kingsheathclangers.me/about
Today was Demo Day dress rehersal! There are 10 different teams in the school of code cohort and we came together to have full run throughs of our demo presentations, gain feedback from the coaches and our peers and also make any last minute improvements. It was great to see how everyone else's demos and I'm feeling proud of us all.
I am thrilled to share that my 16-week journey at the School of Code bootcamp has come to a successful end! 🎓🚀 Today we had our Demo Day where my team and I had the incredible opportunity to showcase our final project to a diverse audience of companies and industry professionals, including George Hall from Good Growth, Matt Chalmers from DataStax and Jeremy Strong from Invoco Telecom. It was an exhilarating experience to present an application we developed from scratch that addresses a real-world problem. 💡🌍 Reflecting on this journey, I am amazed at how far I've come. From having no prior coding experience to now being able to contribute meaningfully to a project that adds value, is a transformative experience. The bootcamp was intense and challenging, but it was also incredibly rewarding.
Link to work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2DT-UdjQ9U
Today is my first day since School of Code has eneded. It feels refreshing to have some time to recouperate and I'm excited to see what my future holds. I gained valuable feedback on my CV from Nadeem from Sage and Andy from the School of Code employability team and put their tips into action but also felt inspired to completely redesign my whole CV. I know that I gravitate more towards front-end and design and thought I would like my CV to show that interest and be more visually appealing and make use of UX tips such as colours, font size and weight and logical flow. I can finally say that it is officially done!!
Link to work: https://www.canva.com/design/DAGHX_Q5Kmg/u3036kinYnbZen0k_FzdFg/edit?utm_content=DAGHX_Q5Kmg&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=sharebutton
Today I applied for some jobs who are School of Code partners and some who are external, worked on my 100 days of code repo, explored the benefits of LinkedIm Premium and how it will support my job seeking and did some networking with potential employers from demo day.
Today I wrote a cover letter, applied for some jobs and continued to work on organising my 100 days of code repo and getting my GitHub profile job ready.
Today I continued improving my GitHub profile by editing my profile readme and organising which repos I can pin to my account and giving them informative repos too
Today was the first employability session held by the School of Code employability team. This included a general Q&A session regarding job seeking and life after the course followed by a talk by Hannah from Jadu who gave us tips on our CVs and the interview process. Lastly, I shared my CV with my peers and gained valuable feedback.
Today I engaged in a School of Code feedback session. This involved having discussions on all aspects of the course such as the pre-course, the course itself and the final projects and demo. It was great to experience the course listening to our thoughts and discussing ways to potentially implement them. Then I met with my peer Timothy where we continued to work on our travel carbon emissions calculator called Eco-Leap, before I spent the afternoon finishing off my GitHub readmes and completing the employability course section on the School of Code learning platform.
Link to work: REPO: https://github.com/KelseyBaker262/eco-leap.git DEPLOYED SITE: https://eco-leap.vercel.app/
Today I engaged in an employability session with School of Code. This gave me lots of tips on my LinkedIn, GitHub, Otta and Hackajob accounts. I then met with Albert and we discussed the future of our final project and delegated some tasks to complete this week and next week to continue making progress. Finally, I met with Timothy who was able to give me some really valuable insights into the CSS of our final project. We were able to fix the landing page and footer on the website :)
Link to work: https://www.kingsheathclangers.me/
Today I started the day with a level 6 CodeWars Kata. It felt good to start challenging myself and learning new things. This is something that I want to keep up daily, then I shared my CV and cover letter with Andy for feedback, updated my GitHub and Linked in profile, applied for some jobs and then looked for some jobs to apply to.
Link to work: https://www.codewars.com/kata/52efefcbcdf57161d4000091
Today I did my second ever technical test created by School of Code on CoderBytes. This has reduced by anxiety of the unknown regarding tech tests in the job hiring process and has been helpful to show me what parts of Javascript that I need to brush up on. After, I applied for a couple jobs.
Today I spent a few hours going through the list of 100 companies which School of Code have provided me with. This in partner companies and I will to research them and choose a top 5. After, SoC will reach out to these companies and introduce me and them so build connections for future job opportunities. Its really interesting to learn about lots of different companies but it has been taking me absolutely hours!!!
Today I continued with researching the 100 partner companies for a couple hours.
Today I started the day with an employability session which included a guest talk from Mike Elsmore. Mike was very down to earth and explained to myself and fellow bootcampers about the current tech industry and gave lots of helpful tips including: refer to the job description rather than the title because often the description is more accurate, join hackathons and meet ups in our local area and online to network but don't burn ourselves out, tips on how to network and to not specialise in one area of tech yet as we have a lot to learn and learning as much as we can now in a full stack role will be more beneficial.
After, I met up with Albert and we continued researching the list of 100 companies that School of Code have given us before continuing on our SoC final project where we merged Winnie's auth and login branch, resolved conflict requests and then deployed and tested it. To finish off the day I explored some internal and external roles to apply to.
WOW its day 100! It feels like time has really flown by. I'm really proud to complete the challenge and it's been a great way to document my journey. Reading the earlier days is a pleseant reminder of how far I've come. Today I spent some time doing CodeWars katas to keep up my skills before applying to jobs. I then met with Timothy where we continued our Eco-Leap project. Now our boiler plate has been set up and all security and CI/CD measures are in place, we were able to start researching and planning. We thought about what we wanted our app to look like and what APIs we could use.