Finishing A Side Project

Mosae /Mos'eye/ — Mon, 16 Nov 2020 22:22:32 +0000

I recently graduated from Lambda School - A 9+ month Computer Science & Software Engineering Academy that provides an immersive hands-on curriculum with a focus on computer science, web and mobile development, UX design, and data science.

Well, it becomes apparent that employers and hiring managers are more interested in what you can do without supervision - by that, I mean doing more than what's in your curriculum.

This is where I am right now. After a few days of wondering what to build, starting and abandoning projects prematurely, I decided to stick to one and build a basic API based application using React and javaScript that will display covid data on a line graph and bar graph. This application is meant to test my skills on different levels.
1 - Working with API's and extracting only the vital details
2 - Working with react charts to display data.
3 - Sticking to a project until completion.

There are many things I learned from working on this project. Most, I already knew, but it was refreshing to go over concepts that may have faded a bit.

Overall, the biggest positive I take from building this project is the fact that I finished it and deployed it. We all know how many projects are started and then put on the back burner the moment another shiny project shows up. I encourage you to stick to one and finish it. Not only will you learn a lot, but it's a very satisfying feeling!

Mosae Litsoane: Github
Checkout the deployed project: Covid-Tracker

Helping Build Bridges in Rwanda

Mosae /Mos'eye/ — Fri, 28 Aug 2020 18:27:23 +0000

A wonderful opportunity came by! And it was to work on a project that will help map ideal locations for a non-profit company to build bridges for the people of Rwanda, I couldn't be happier to get started.😃

I collaborated with a team of 6 remote web developers, 3 Data Scientists, and a UX/UI designer.

WHAT ARE WE GOING TO BUILD? 🤔

After meeting with the stakeholder, we found out their main needs:

A map to show villages and where current bridges are located
Filter through bridges
Search for bridge sites by specific criteria
The ability for admin to add, edit, and delete bridge sites.

User Personas

Staff can get and retrieve data and view results
Admin can add, edit, and delete bridge sites.

💼 What tech stack to use?

Front-End

React,Redux and Javascript
MapBox to display the data on a map
Back-End
NodeJS, Postman, Postgres

📝 Planning the project

After a few good ideas on how we would display the information to the users, we decided to go with a familiar design that's similar to google maps style. This will make it easy to visualize the data.

📈 What's our project status?

Well, working with an amazing team of devs has certainly made this project very enjoyable to work on. We have managed to collaborate well through our daily stand-ups and pair-programming and we have made significant progress so far.

This is a work in progress, but our landing page will look like this:

With over 1300 bridge sites, we want to give our users the ability to search/filter through the bridges and display only relevant data.

Where to from here?

This is the end of our first version of the application. In the next several weeks, we will meet with our stakeholders and look to improve upon the application.

Our Team

👨🏼‍💻 Devs:

Jimmy McBride: Github
Devin Graham: Github
Anthony Amaro: Github
Gerald Ryan: Github
James Carpino: Github
Mosae Litsoane: Github

🧪 Data Science:

Alex
PingAo
Jessica Cooper

🕺🏻 UX/UI:

Brian Nam:Github

DEV Community: Mosae /Mos'eye/