Exciting Updates
This week has made some great headway in my umbrella project and my time at my employer host. Not only am I now starting to really get in the groove of things and starting to actually code some of our features for the Umbrella project.
First things first, I've never made a web API. This is the first time I've done this kind of thing, and with how we are organizing our project we have the backend and frontend completely separate, and a big hurdle I was concerned over was trying to connect the two in order to get communication and backend logic started. And luckily with some research, demo programs and trial and error, we managed to get the frontend to receive information from the backend with a GET command. So with that, we have the first major part of the project done and can actually start getting things built and formatted which felt so amazing getting to work.
And then now, although I won't go into specifics, I'm now a part of a team at my employer host. Although it is a very recent development, and I haven't yet gotten the chance to hands on work with them, being officially a part of their team is great. I'll finally get a chance to work with them, code some things, and get that hands on work experience as well.
Decisions on the Umbrella Project
As I had mentioned in a previous blog, we had to change the direction of our Umbrella Project's tech-stack in order to make it more feasible and applicable to what we would be learning as part of the program. At first we were going for a completely mobile hosted application, however as I understand it, that approach wouldn't give as much of a frontend and backend approach as the OS of the mobile device would be the 'backend' so to speak.
Along with that, it wouldn't overlap at all with what I'd learn to use at my employer host. So we changed gears to go for a web API that mobile first with its formatting essentially. Although our tech stack hasn't changed (thankfully due to us keeping the desired functionality and requirements to a lower degree), it is being shifted to a different type of project.
As for the specific aspects of the tech-stack and why we chose them, we went for a Node.js and React frontend due to that being the tech-stack the demo umbrella project is using, my partner is fairly familiar with it, along with our employer host suggesting to use it. React also allows for multi-platform code. So we are able to have an app that works great on a computer, tablet or phone.
Our Database and backend were selected solely off of recommendations and suggestions from our mentors, employer host and vague familiarity. I very familiar with Java which has similar syntax and overall structure (in my opinion that is) to C# which is what we will be using. So making the transfer from Java to C# shouldn't be that difficult. As for MongoDB, it was suggested and once I got to mess around with it, I enjoyed how it structures data and messes with it.
Overall Recap
In terms of coming up with our tech-stack, it was mostly through suggestions that we chose them. We fully expect that the need to add more to our tech-stack may come up in the future, however we aren't aiming for a high functionality app that has a lot of different parts to it. We are hoping to create the app to solve that issue it aims to solve, and make the solution as well done as possible rather than having a lot of other things it does. Right off the bat we agreed to this kind of approach.
Aims to Achieve
I know I'm anxious and nervous about being on a team finally. There's a lot we have to do, and I don't know how to do much of it at all but I know they are hoping to teach me new things and watch me succeed. Which helps A LOT. But I look forward to slowly easing myself into the workflow of their project, get to learn what each thing does and eventually help contribute with great features.
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