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Mosae /Mos'eye/
Mosae /Mos'eye/

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Finishing A Side Project

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!

Top comments (4)

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manuelmartindev profile image
ManuelMartinDev

Absolutely agree , it's hard to keep with a project until the end , what happened to me on the last one is that I started to do the things fast and not the way I'd like, then when I had the backend done I saw that I wasn't happy with the code and I deleted everything (around 3000 lines of code), I will give it a new try of be patience and do the things in a way I feel happy with it

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mosae profile image
Mosae /Mos'eye/

I can totally relate to that. I also feel like just getting over the line and then modifying after the project is functional is a good way to go. The satisfaction of meeting MVP > trying to get everything to be perfect and pretty.

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cadams profile image
Chad Adams

The only projects I end up finishing are the ones I use myself or find very useful.

This is a nitpick but why on your project do I have to scroll all the way to the bottom to pick US? Also why is it “US” and not “United States”? That’s so annoying lol

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natelindev profile image
Nathaniel

Props to you, I have like 5+ unfinished projects now.