Hello friends,
So I'm back finally. After spending the last two weeks obsessing over this project here I am out on the other end, still alive. I wanted to write today's recap of the last few days and provide some insights into how the experience was as a whole. So let's dive right in.
How It Started
I went into things with a lot of energy, but I think I didn't properly scale the size of my ambition with the time I had to complete the project. That's something I had to figure out a bit later than I should've. I knew right off the bat I wanted to use Vue, and that despite this being a front-end focused assignment I wanted to do as much back-end stuff as possible. Pretty much to the point where I was completing all the requirements for BOTH assignments. While yes I think that was still achievable I think I definitely could've spent my time better some of the days. For example day one I spent a good few hours making an identically animated button as on the company's website, which I never actually used anywhere. That's a few hours I could've spent on something like a search bar, or filtering. All things I had to leave out towards the end just because of time. So while things started guns a-blazing, I had to hold back some rounds to make sure things were complete and polished before handing in.
The Process
When I was really into it I found myself falling pray to some obsessive behaviours. This is something I struggle with all the time. I get into these hyper focused states and forget everything around me. It makes everyday life quite challenging to say the least. The stress was real. For multiple days it felt as if I had this gigantic weight in my stomach weighing down my every move. And I just had to push through knowing that it will go away in a few days. It was unpleasant yeah, and it's a part of my personality I need to learn to control better.
Take Aways
The main take away is plan better. Really outline the features you'd like to implement and set aside reasonable times to do it. I think a part of the stress is not knowing how much time I would need to complete something. For example I imagined the responsiveness for mobile styling would take me a few days at least. When reality I got it done in a half a day. If you properly plan and prepare your time carefully you'll reduce stress by a ton. Another is meet the minimum first, then go crazy. I had this tendency to start doing crazy features without the actual foundation to work with. I had to pause and stop myself from optimizing error handling in my forms because I knew I didn't even have all my forms completed.
Something that I actually did very well I'd like to say is write code for the next Alex. All my forms are basically the exact same format both stylistically and backendically. I did this on purpose and spent quite some time styling the first form knowing dang well that I'd be using those styles multiple times. That way I could prepare adequately for all that that code would need to do now and in the future. This as well as I think I used AI very well. Besides generating tons of dummy data for my database, it was super useful in translating React concepts to Vue, as well as helping me debug why some stylings sucked. I think in the most part it was just a good idea generator, which I could then implement in alignment with my formatting and structure.
Today I sent in my final version and uploaded my motivation video and it feels so good to have completed this assignment. Despite having countless things I would've wanted to add, this project was a real testament to all the self taught programming I've learned over the last 14 months. I've come a long way and regardless of whether I make it in or not, I'm happy. Thanks for reading today's blog, I'll probably take a day to recover but I'll be back to business tomorrow. Until next time, friend.