DEV Community: Miko 👾

How do you maintain focus on learning just one topic/concept?

Miko 👾 — Tue, 07 Jul 2020 15:00:09 +0000

There are so many different languages and technologies out there that sometimes I find myself to be working on web dev one week, and then iOS dev the next, and this cycle tends to repeat.

How do you maintain your focus for learning one thing at a time, and how do you know when to move on to learning the next thing?

My First Chatbot - A random dog & hobby generator for quarantined boredom

Miko 👾 — Fri, 01 May 2020 06:30:22 +0000

What I Built

Category Submission: Interesting Integrations

A lot of people are really bored during quarantine and are running ideas of what to do! Therefore I came up with the idea of creating an SMS chatbot that people could text and get a random hobby idea back. It was hard to google the wording for such an API, so I did some digging online and found a txt file containing over 600 random hobbies.

I also added a random dog generator using the dog API given the tutorial I was following generated random photos of cats, but lately photos of dogs have been helping me during this time so I thought they'd be nice for someone else too!

Demo Link: https://gph.is/g/E0nDyPy

Link to Code: https://github.com/KDJ1221/Twilio-Hobby-Bot

How I built it (what's the stack? did I run into issues or discover something new along the way?)

I've recently just began my new journey of using web frameworks and APIs and have had an interest in how to build a chatbot, so I followed Miguel Grinberg's Twilio API tutorial and set up a base project that I soon "remixed".

I used Python, the Flask framework, Twilio's SMS API and helper library for Python, and ngrok to connect the Flask app and Twilio.

I ran into some issues during the initial setup of the app, such as terminal errors with Flask and ngrok when in the virtual environment given a lot of dependencies were not installed yet (I'm also new to using virtual environments, they're actually really useful!)

Additional Info

Although it is my first chatbot, there is definitely room for improvement for the future. For instance, if I had used an API for hobby generation I would have been better able to filter out what hobbies should be sent. With my implementation anyone can get otherworldly hobbies they can't do right now such as alpine skiing or backpacking, etc.

Something else I intend on investigating is finding a replacement for ngrok. Sessions only last 8 hours, which isn't really enough time to have a lasting app for others to test! Would definitely appreciate any advice on this!

Why I Don't Find Coding Tutorials As Helpful Anymore

Miko 👾 — Fri, 10 Apr 2020 04:10:51 +0000

Once upon a time when I was learning how to code about 2 years ago, I discovered the many different branches of software development and was eager to learn them all.

It essentially felt as though the programming world was my oyster because of the unlimited amount of resources in online courses and tutorials that were available to me - I could learn anything whenever I wanted and as fast as I wanted to!(At least that's what I thought at the time.)

Course after course, and tutorial after tutorial, I was having so much fun setting up new project environments and following walkthroughs on how to build a new app or game, that I lost sight of what was really important to software development and programming in general.

Over time I started to realize that I was following these tutorials to a T thinking that I actually knew the material being taught, but in reality when I tried to implement a similar project on my own, I could barely get past the set up stages. The picture below essentially describes my situation:

What I've learned over the course of the last few months is that if you really want to know how to develop on your own, or retain information on anything you're learning generally speaking, you just have to jump in and do it.

I'd be lying if I said that I don't look at coding tutorials from time to time if I get lost on how to start or implement something, or if I just want to learn something new. But I've learned how to take the pieces of information I do need and use them to make my own thing.