React Revelations

As you look at the image above, I’m sure many of you have felt how that image does. I know I have. Let’s talk about one of my experiences that made myself feel this way and also, how can i prevent this from happening again?

A major fault of mine is that I tend to get ahead of myself. This doesn’t usually work out in the end when starting up as a software engineer. I get an idea, and without even thinking about it, I try and tackle it. Now I’m up at 3am correcting mistakes I made for doing just that. So lets talk about ways that will help lead to a better outcome. Before I get into all of that, I’m going to explain how I got here.

Project week for Phase 3 of Flatiron. Coming into the week very excited because I just passed the Ruby code challenge after studying the day/night before the challenge. I was also sick all week long which led to not getting a lot of material completed before the challenge. So already I’m a little behind for project week that was combining the use of React for the front-end and Ruby for the back-end. In my head I thought that I’d be fine because React seemed very familiar! Wrong, confidence wasn’t enough for this project. Before we got into the developing side of the project, we did a little pre planning on our idea and how it should look. After that, I dug right in. I built a nice home page, had my components seperated, and thought everything was smooth like butter. Then I started building out where our data needed to go, which I didn’t take into account a multitude of things. I didn’t think about how we’re going to get values, how we’re going to store data, or how we’re going to update the back-end through entering data on the front-end, and many other things... As you might have figured, doing this is going to get a little messy. My components were STACKED with code, to the point where the app would hardly run. I just wanted stuff to work and how i wanted it to work. As the week went on I knew I dug a hole too deep to fill back up. There is many ways I could’ve prevented this from happening. Which is why I want to take the time and write about what I could’ve done to do just that.

There’s a couple things you should do before you start a project. Get an idea, map out how you want it to look, think about what data needs to be stored in certain components, and really just plan out how to get your project done. In my case, I jumped in and started swinging my fingers at the keyboard. If I would’ve just taken a step back, and actually did what I mentioned above, problems could’ve been handled a lot better and in a more effecient manner.

Building a project is bound to arise problems. How can we start with an idea, and make it a reality? To start, as I mentioned above, plan out the idea. One thing Flatiron teaches, is to use a wireframe. Creating a wireframe would’ve saved an immense amount of time and stress during my build. We built one but just whipped it up and I said, “yeah, looks good.” I never even took the wireframe into account. Using a wireframe can visually help setup your future components and where data needs to be stored. Something similar that we use is just a diagram we draw of the component heiarchy:

This is always a hard thing for me being an independent person. Even though I struggle with this, I feel like working with a group during a project I have good communication. But good comunnication doesn’t just involve speaking to your fellow developers. A strong part of the communication process should involve getting together and writing down what each member is going to accomplish, how your group is going to accomplish that, and checking in frequently to see how the group is doing. This was a huge fault of mine during this project. I just worked and worked with no communication until my brain was fried and then worked some more and dealt with the consequences later, which in turn, piled on more work. Practicing a better way of communicating and planning will provide for a better work experience, and environment!

Another struggle I came across during my project build, was a lack of testing. As I mentioned before, knowing where to store your data is just one part of planning your project. Testing that data is a major key that will provide a better build experience. Without thoroughly testing your data, there’s no way of telling how your application is doing. It’s good to have some test data for testing to see that your data functions properly. You want to make sure that the test data is producing the results you want, and also using that data to see negative results, which you can then change to prevent your app from breaking. Testing is very important and should be used often when building your app!

Lastly, take your time. Something I will continue to practice, and ensure that I understand what that truly means. Rushing through anything is going to produce a bad product. There are going to be deadlines, but taking your time will pay off in the end. This includes breaks from staring at a screen, slowing down your pace on the computer and analyzing the situation, or even putting on some soothing music while you’re working. All of these practices are going to get you relaxed and motivated to keep working through the struggles.

Take all of these things I’ve mentioned above and tie it all together. You will have a better experience practicing these concepts and will become better at your career.

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