DEV Community: Qoom, Inc.

Interview with iTest, Winners of the 2020 TecHacks Hackathon

carissa-tang — Sun, 15 Nov 2020 04:34:18 +0000

Originally published on www.qoom.io/blog and written by Yanran Le

The TecHacks Hackathon is aimed at bridging the gender gap by enabling female students to find passion in computer science and problem-solving. All 552 hackathon participants self-identify as female or nonbinary and are a high school or undergraduate students. A total of 119 projects were submitted.

Through an email interview, I was able to ask Jolina, Carmel, and Lorina, who created iTest, some questions about their hackathon experience. The team was able to win the Qoom challenge portion of the hackathon amongst fierce competition.

Q: Can you introduce yourselves please?

J: Hi! I’m Jolina and I’m a first year student at University of Toronto. I’m planning on doing a double major in Computer Science and Cognitive Science, with potentially a focus on AI.

C: Hello, I’m Carmel, and I plan on majoring in Life Science and Computer Science.

L: Hey :) I’m Larina. I’m entering first year general engineering at Northwestern University. I’m not sure about my major yet, but I have interests in materials science, AI, IoT, and sustainability.

Q: Can you tell us about your project and how you came up with the idea?

J: iTest is a website that features multiple eye tests that help you conveniently check your eye health for underlying neurological problems. The tests are easily accessible and fun to do. I think we were talking about using your eyes to control the screen and this eye tracking tool, then the convo topic somehow turned into eye tests...

C: Due to covid, a lot of individuals don’t necessarily have access to the healthcare concerning conditions that are deemed less severe, so we wanted to create a simple diagnostic tool to help individuals access the information they need when that information is not easily accessible.

L: The problem our project is trying to solve is actually quite personal to me. I have regular check-ups with my doctor, but recently due to covid-19, my check-up was reduced to a single short phone call. As a result, we couldn’t do some of our usual check-up exams, and this really made me wish for more and better telemedicine tools. During the hackathon, our team was talking about eye exam check-ups, which made me recall my own check-ups, and then I was like “Hey! You know what might be a cool idea...?”

Q: How much coding experience do you have?

J: My very first coding experience was in Grade 6, where I basically copied HTML files to create my first “Hello World” website. I didn’t take any Computer Science classes in high school, but I self-studied Python and MIT AppInventor’s block-based coding for a competition. Now, I’m learning CSS, Javascript, and re-learning HTML for our Qoom project.

C: I started coding in grade 5 for fun, and I taught myself HTML, CSS, and Javascript/Jquery using online resources. I would then use my web-design skills to create school projects instead of using powerpoints or prezis, because I could have full control over how I wanted my website/project to appear.

L: I have used snippets of code here and there for various small projects since grade 10, but the first time I actually learned about programming was only 1 year ago in my AP computer science class at school. Since then, I’ve been teaching myself various languages to do more fun projects. This summer, I’ve been learning machine learning with a scholarship program, and I’m going to self study more on CSS, Javascript, and HTML for our Qoom project.

Q: Why did you decide to participate in this Hackathon?

J: I’ve always been curious about the Hackathon experience, but I never really dared to do one because of my lack of skills. Then, I came across TecHacks and saw “No experience required” which immediately caught my attention. I thought, this was my chance to finally try out a Hackathon (and a virtual one for the first). Not to mention, the workshops about AI and Machine Learning allured me further.

C: I was introduced to the Hackathon by my teammate Jolina, and I thought it would be a good way to practise my coding skills, while picking up new skills with all the workshops the hackathon offered. I also wanted to apply my skills under a competitive environment and see what we could produce as a team under time pressure.

L: This was also my first hackathon. I’m all for trying out new things and challenges, so when I came across this hackathon, I just thought “why not?” Plus, the workshops looked very interesting, and I was super excited for them!

Q: Did you run into any problems or challenges during the Hackathon? How did you resolve them?

J: Yes, we had quite a few problems—from not really knowing the languages of Qoom (HTML,CSS, Javascript) to a huge time pressure. A specific problem that I had was after creating homepage designs on Figma, I didn’t know how to build them up with code in Qoom. After some experimenting, I managed to get the title, description, header image, and “Test Now” button up there, but still everything looked super messy. I, then, messaged Kiae, the Qoom mentor, for help and she offered a lot of great advice around resizing, gradient colours, and more. Finally, the homepage started looking better.

C: Time pressure was a challenge for me, as I knew what we were capable of as a team,but I was unsure about what we could achieve given the time we had. Due to time pressure, even after pulling an all-nighter, we only completed one test fully, though we completed one level for the two other tests (to demonstrate an example of what it was). Debugging was a very long process, and would occasionally take up an hour to find the issue (big or small), and to resolve it. Thanks to Kiae, she helped with the debugging process, and helped us move our focus back on producing the actual product.

L: My biggest challenge was definitely that, at the beginning, I had absolutely no experience with the languages Qoom uses. At first, I felt really bad because I felt like I wouldn’t be able to contribute. Thanks to Carmel’s awesome 10-minute CSS, html, and Javascript crash course, I started to get the gist of how things fit together in a website. Then, I went on Youtube and other online resources to learn (and sometimes copy) specific code snippets that I needed. I was also able to draw on my experience with other programming languages to help me work with these new languages.

Q: How did you learn about Qoom? Why did you decide to use Qoom?

C: I learned about Qoom after investigating the different platforms/tools that the Hackathon featured, and I thought Qoom would be a good tool to use, as we all had knowledge of at least one language Qoom used (Javascript).

Q: What did you use Qoom for?

All: We used Qoom for implementing designs created on Figma and creating functional eye tests for testing extraocular movement, using HTML, CSS, and Javascript/Jquery.

Q: What was your overall impression of Qoom?

J: In such a short amount of time, we were able to design and develop a beautiful website using Qoom. I think Qoom is very beginner-friendly, easy to navigate, and efficient in the development process.

C: I remember a couple of years ago looking for a platform like Qoom to code websites online, but not being able to find one, or finding a platform that was difficult to use.

Qoom is very straightforward, has a good text editor, and is something I will definitely use to collaborate on in the future.

L: As a beginner to web design, I liked how Qoom was easy to understand and navigate. I really appreciated that Qoom allowed me to focus on learning and developing the website and not be caught up in a whirlwind of extraneous technical work.

Q: How does Qoom stand out from other coding tools?

J: I’m not too familiar with other coding tools, but I can say the environment gives you an easier time organizing code and finding errors. It also has a screen feature where you can see a live update of your website as you code.

C: One unique item about Qoom is its collaborative features. Though I know more improvements are being added to this specific feature, updates carry over to the recently updated text document with a simple reload, which makes collaborating on the document possible.

Due to this feature, our team was able to work together on the website, and improve it as we could see the updates that someone else was responsible for.

L: As a web development beginner, I can’t really provide accurate comparisons between Qoom and other web design tools. However, I can say that some other coding tools that I have used for other types of projects were a lot more difficult to navigate in comparison to Qoom. I like how intuitive Qoom is to use.

Q: What recommendations or tips would you have for a first-time developer using Qoom?

J: Don’t be afraid to play around with different Qoom features. There’s a lot you can explore, and the more you interact with the environment, the more familiar you will be with using Qoom! You can also create multiple copy files of your original, so your progress is saved as you try out different things.

L: I 100% agree with Jolina.

I built a lot of features through trial and error. Since Qoom does have many features that support this (such live update), I highly recommend using the trial and error process to help you learn and build.

Another tip is to always ask for help. The languages Qoom uses is very commonplace, so there are a lot of great resources out there.

Q: What is next for your project?

All: We are currently doing some research with eye health experts to improve iTest’s efficiency in the health tool field. Our long-term goal is to make iTest helpful and impactful in the healthcare industry.

Qoom was a proud sponsor of the TecHacks Hackathon. If you are planning on hosting a hackathon yourself, please contact us!

Want to see what Jolina, Carmel and Larina created with Qoom? Want to try iTest: The Online Extraocular Eye Exam for yourself? Click here.

Build a project like iTest yourself! Get started now by creating your own Qoom account! Start your free trial!

Interview with Generate STEAMinds, Winners of the 2020 TecHacks Hackathon

carissa-tang — Sun, 15 Nov 2020 04:15:03 +0000

Originally published on www.qoom.io/blog and written by Yanran Le

I was able to reach out to Carissa Tang from the Generate STEAMinds team, for an email interview. Generate STEAMinds was a winner of the Qoom Challenge portion of the hackathon. The team consists of four members from around the world: Alyzee Soza and Amy Palm, rising juniors from SoCal; Andrea Gonzales, a college student from the Philippines; Carissa Tang, a rising senior from Toronto, Canada.

Q: Can you tell us about your project and how you came up with the idea?

C: Our project, Generate STEAMinds, is an online platform that provides educational resources for STEAM learning and promotes creative innovations through idea generators. This project was inspired by our passion for not only STEM, but also the arts, and the relative lack of holistic learning platforms of this kind online. We also value innovation greatly but know that at times, especially during this pandemic, it can be challenging to think creatively. We hope that through Generate STEAMinds, students are inspired to create new projects from random, unique ideas while also being intellectually stimulated.

Q: How much coding experience do you have?

C: I was first exposed to coding in grade 10 through an Introduction to Computer Science course, where I learned Python. However, it wasn’t until the COVID-19 quarantine when I continued programming and began to learn HTML/CSS/JS on my own!

Q: Why did you decide to participate in this Hackathon?

C: I decided to participate in this Hackathon because it was an all-female event—I loved the idea of being in an empowering community with other driven and passionate females. Oftentimes in the past, I was intimidated and discouraged from participating in Hackathons due to feelings of imposter syndrome. However, TecHack’s emphasis on inclusivity despite being a beginner coder made me feel very welcomed, so I knew I had to take this opportunity!

Since being quarantined at home, I have been able to explore my interests and realized how much I loved coding! This Hackathon was the perfect opportunity for me to expand my knowledge and interest in the field.

Q: Did you run into any problems or challenges during the Hackathon? How did you resolve them?

C: The greatest challenge we faced during the Hackathon was the conception of our project. Since this was our first Hackathon, we didn’t know what to expect nor what was expected of us. We decided to focus on picking an idea that we could realistically execute while still being usable and having an impact. Other issues included our time zone differences and our unfamiliarity with code collaboration, however, through our strong teamwork and ability to compromise, we quickly overcame these problems. We were able to even use our time zone differences to our advantage and work practically 24/7 on our project! This facilitated the building process as my team members and I were able to take turns coding on one Qoom account. We also assigned each person to a specific page so that the collaboration process would run more smoothly.

Q: How did you learn about Qoom? Why did you decide to use Qoom?

C: We learned about Qoom through this Hackathon and the workshop hosted by Kiae! When we heard there was a Qoom challenge, we knew we wanted to take part.

Q: What did you use Qoom for?

C: As Qoom is an instant web development environment, we used Qoom to host our project’s website. Using HTML, CSS, and Javascript, we coded our project in our Qoom space. Qoom allowed for each of us to work on our assigned pages independently while also being able to preview everyone else’s pages.

Q: What was your overall impression of Qoom?

C: Qoom is a minimalist platform that includes all the necessary and useful features such as real-time preview and Git integration. I found Qoom to be very beginner-friendly with a nice guide that really helped me to easily navigate through the platform.

Q: How does Qoom stand out from other coding tools?

C: I loved that with Qoom, we had a personal server in the cloud that mimics a Google Drive or DropBox.

It was a very organized way of displaying all our files, and since it was similar to Google Drive, the familiarity made it easy for me to use!

I also loved that there were different ways of previewing our website, whether it was in a new window or side by side with my code. The random URL address for our Qoom space was also a fun addition! I also loved that each page had a QR code! It is such a unique feature and made my life a lot easier :D.

Q: What recommendations or tips would you have for a first-time developer using Qoom?

C: As a beginner coder myself, I found Qoom to be relatively simple. My biggest tip would be to look through the guides under Qoom’s support page as it really helped me learn how to use the platform very quickly for the Hackathon! I would also suggest taking advantage of Qoom’s features, such as real-time preview, which was super helpful as I got to see my actual project while I was editing.

Q: What is next for your project?

C: My team and I are planning on expanding Generate STEAMinds to include a greater database of resources and for a greater range of people, as well as implementing new interactive features such as educational games.

Qoom was a proud sponsor of the TecHacks Hackathon. If you are planning on hosting a hackathon yourself, please contact us!

You can check out Carissa and her team's project, Generate STEAMinds, here to see how they used Qoom.

Try Qoom yourself here!

How Qoom Helped Me On My Entrepreneurial Endeavor

carissa-tang — Sun, 15 Nov 2020 03:57:21 +0000

Originally published on www.qoom.io/blog and written by Nathan Lee

About Ontrack

Ontrack is a parental control application I built that helps parents monitor their kids while they're studying. I had already previously created a chrome extension that allows students to self-study. With the coronavirus pandemic that started a few months ago, however, I decided to build a parental control application so that parents would be able to monitor kids studying at home. Especially for young children, being forced to stay home and do homework online makes it very easy for them to get distracted by entertainment sites. Without going into too much detail, Ontrack essentially allows parents to enforce study sessions where students may only access certain approved websites and keep track of websites that their kids are accessing. To learn more about Ontrack, go to https://joinontrack.com.

How Qoom Helped Me Build Ontrack

A few months back, I had an idea to pivot my business idea to the parental control market due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Having previously built chrome extensions, my plan for the product was to build a full-stack web application that would be paired with a chrome extension. The parent would install the extension on their child's device and use a parent portal to monitor their child. With all the nuances and features figured out, it was time to actually build the product.

The chrome extension part was very simple and publishing it was simply a matter of waiting for the Chrome Web Store to approve it. The parent portal, however, would be very complicated. Although I had the technical knowledge to build the necessary components, I didn't have much experience with databases and web hosting. It would also be a huge pain to debug the communication errors between the portal and the extension because I would have to toggle through a handful of applications.

Qoom replaces them all

That's when I was introduced to Qoom. At first, I was a little sceptical about doing all my work on my Qoom space as I had grown extremely comfortable on Visual Studio Code. However, with all the necessary node packages already installed and the back end files already set up, I went with it as it would save me a lot of time. From then on, all I had to do was code. Instead of having to set up a local server to preview what I had or setting up a domain through GoDaddy, I could view it from the production server on my desired domain. Since Qoom automatically stores and saves all your code files, I didn't even need to push and pull code from Github. All I had to do was wait a few seconds for the code to save and reload the application. My account even came with a Mongodb database setup so I didn't have to make an Atlas account to keep track of user data.

Thinking back on my coding experience, the amount of time and work that Qoom saved me was absolutely mindblowing! The built-in domain, hosting, and database allowed me to focus on the coding so that I could get my product out as quickly as possible. It's like being able to do a job without having to go through the paperwork!

OnTrack is the winner of 2019 Leangap competition. Qoom helps entrepreneurial students succeed.

The Best Way to Learn Coding: Building Your Own Project

carissa-tang — Sun, 15 Nov 2020 03:41:33 +0000

Originally published on www.qoom.io/blog and written by Yanran Le

These days it seems like coding has become an essential skill. Everyone is looking to pick up coding skills and the internet is scattered with all kinds of resources. Resources range from coding courses, to bootcamps to coding tutorials, and it's normal to feel overwhelmed. I'm here to help guide you through a couple of these resources so you can be on your way to developing your own ideas!

To begin, you will want to learn the basics of a coding language. There are many resources that can help with this. You can sign up for courses that can provide excellent explanations and step by step help on how to create certain projects. For all the visual learners, it is easy to find tons of tutorials on YouTube by simply typing which language and what function you'd like to learn into the search bar.

The best way to learn is by building and running your own web project.

Although there are many resources as mentioned that will provide some basic understanding of code and how to perform certain functions, the way to become a real developer is to make the leap from coding tutorials to building projects. Building your own project with your own ideas is the fun part of coding that also gives you the most useful experience. With coding tutorials, you may find yourself stuck coding basic learning apps and your learning start to plateau. That is when you should shift to some more "hands-on" learning. Transitioning from tutorials to coding your own project can be daunting, but there are also resources that can help you with this.

Qoom, an all-in-one coding suite that offers an in-browser code editor helps with exactly that. With Qoom, you don't need to worry about any installations, implementations or publishing. All you need to focus on is coding your ideas. Qoom is a great space for coders of all levels to create their own web projects. Supporting all front-end markup and script languages, Qoom provides a live preview as you code and instant deployment. You can store all your files and projects under your own domain. Qoom is also a collaborative space that allows you to share and show off your new projects with friends! It is definitely the go-to platform for coding your own project.

There are also specific resources for you when you embark on the journey of building your own project. One popular resource is freecodecamp.com, which is a non-profit organization that not only teaches you language syntax and function but also offers 6,000+ tutorials. With 300 hours, you can even obtain different certificates for your new skills by completing a list of tasks. You can also find tons of videos created by freecodecamp that teach you how to build certain projects. For example, this video shows you how to make your own YouTube App.

Another resource that would come in handy as you create projects is codepen.io, which provides source codes for simple stand-alone apps that you can customize in Qoom. For example, if you wanted to create a to-do list app, you may want to refer to these source codes: ToDoLists.

Qoom is the best tool for creating your own web project.

Using Qoom, with the help of other resources like freecodecamp and codepen, there is nothing out of reach. Qoom helps make your learning process as smooth as possible. In no time, you will be coding like a pro.

So what are you waiting for? Start learning now and see what kind of project you can build! Good luck!