What I learned during my first self-directed project at General Assembly.
See Github, and the app itself on Heroku.
1. Planning is Incredibly Important
On day 0 I took the time not only to map out my thoughts but also to plan how to think. It's easy, for me especially, to let a million ideas take over and to be stuck half executing all of them and never coming to the end of any single idea. That, however, does not a project make.
Cue a cute pop culture reference.
Nice.
Anyway to avoid the above: planning (see detailed map out here). I find that if I can write it down, the chances of it getting done improve by at least 90%. On days when my eyes themselves seem to reject the blue light emanating from my laptop screen, and my pores are screaming for sunshine, using this habit or not is a make or break.
2. The Point is Other People
We make roads for driving cars, cups for mouths, and BBQs for people into abstract art. Apps are for users. Getting an MVP done and in front of other people as early as possible was crucial. The core concept of my site was simple enough that I managed to get it up to scratch with CSS to boot by day one, see details here.
I nagged some more experienced programmers who were lovely enough to guide me toward ngrok, and so on day 2 I was able to host the server on my laptop (documentation here for those curious about how that works). The feedback I got from this was crucial to learning what features were must-haves for a useable site and what things could sit on the back burner until the more important features were ironed out. See details of that adventure here.
Outside of the feedback, it's also just so incredibly fun having people interact with things I've made. The whole point of my project was something cute and collaborative. Having friends from inside and outside of class use the thing I made gave me the burst of feel-good brain juice I needed to push me through the latter half of project week despite the bumps along the way.
3. Other Programmers Exist, Ask Them Things
I would have never known about ngrok if I hadn't asked. As a junior learning the ropes, it's easy to get swamped by all the things I do not know and all the things I really really want to know. More importantly, it's also easy for me to assume I'm going about things with the wrong logic when my logic is sound but my code is buggy. Explaining my thinking to more experienced programmers and asking If I'm on the right track is what has saved me on a number of occasions from throwing away a worthwhile experiment that needed some debugging. On the other side, I'm sure in retrospect that on many other occasions, not asking has led me to give up worthwhile experiments feeling defeated and with a chunk of my confidence, M.I.A.
4. Not All Experiments are Worth Pushing Through
Knowing when to pivot was another lesson I learned during my week on this project. I had been pretty desperate to get my whole page working as a drag-and-drop site for my instructions. Since my idea was for something fun, I thought, why not use it to get to play around with kitschy things like that? My aesthetic was already based on Jen Schiffer's Make 8 Bit Art, so why not jack her style entirely and get drag and drop working? Because I have a limited time frame, that's why! Did you read the subheading or not?!
Side note, we look weirdly similar and are both keen on programming meets art. Jen, If you're reading this, I'm coming for you, Jen. Bogan Australian Jen is going to steal your whole deal. Sleep with one eye open tonight.
If you're not Jen, the main point here is that while these experiments as an early developer are as important as they are fun, not everything's going to make the cut. I have our class's stand-up to thank for this lesson. Talking about what I'd done yesterday and the blockers I'd faced made me realise that I'd spent the better part of a day and a half on something that wasn't working out as planned. I'd spent the same amount of time that it took me to produce a whole MVP, and the end wasn't yet in sight, therefore, time to pivot and get some things working before doubling back to the fun bits of added spice if and when there's time.