Sun Finder on Nyghtowl

Flask Mega Tutorial, Sun Finder and SheCodes

Sat, 10 Aug 2013 16:28:13 +0000

It has been a busy several weeks and I’ve written just as lengthy of a blog post as last time from all of it. After deploying my Rails app, I switched gears to refocus on Sun Finder (through an indirect route). I signed up to present the app at SheCodes Conference on August 9th (yesterday) and I wanted to spiff it up a bit.

Flask Mega Tutorial (detour)

Before going back to Sun Finder, I spent a week finally going through the Flask Mega Tutorial which I had wanted to do since March. I highly recommend it because it goes from setting up a virtual environment through full stack development to a variety of deployment options. Going through that after the Rails tutorial was valuable because it solidified common concepts around web application structure (e.g. configuration, app instance setup, db setup and integration, where to delineate between view and controller). And of course it was helpful to contrast the differences to better understand how much Rails does for you behind the scenes.

Sun Finder – Where is it now?

Sun, 09 Jun 2013 08:52:20 +0000

For those following along, I have made very little progress on my Sun Finder application since Career Day about a month ago. Since hindsight is 20/20, I probably could have seen this coming, but I was living in a blissful imaginary world that said: “There will be all this time after I graduate to do all these things”. The reality is that all that time was about to be commandeered by interviews, practice & studying for interview and a bunch of life stuff that you can never plan for.

Career Day – Done & Done

Sat, 11 May 2013 01:19:19 +0000

As promised, I’m taking a moment to post commentary regarding Career Day. It went fast, was a whirlwind of companies and was a relief when it was done.

How it Worked:

Career Day is when Hackbright partner companies meet with students individually and see our skills on display through our final project. It was literally interview speed dating. Each student had a table and every 7 minutes the companies would rotate between the tables. It was a brief time to get a sense on whether there was enough fit for a further conversation/interview.

Week 9 – Crunch Time

Sat, 04 May 2013 17:52:45 +0000

It is hard to stop long enough to write this. Sometimes this past week I was too excited to work on my project to sleep. Still I know this is valuable for my sanity to think through what I’ve done so far and appreciate how far I’ve come. Plus, my brain functions better when I take breaks from coding.

Looking at my post from even a week ago surprises me because it feels like longer than 2 weeks since I was figuring out how to use web APIs for example. At the time it made me feel very lost and the concept seemed extremely foreign. Now whenever I see there’s an API that can be used, it feels like it’s the easiest thing to implement and leverage.

Week 8 – Time Goes Fast When You’re Having Fun (Project Status)

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 21:03:04 +0000

To anyone out there who’s watching, I wrapped up week 8 and I’m thinking about how I want to leverage my time in week 9 in preparation for Career Day. I do talk a lot about that as the D day, and it is to some extent. It’s a goal to help keep focus in terms of how I want to prioritize my time. A second goal is that I only have technically 2 weeks left in the program and there are certain subjects I want to practice while I have class time. Sometimes those goals match in purpose and sometimes I have to just pick based on how I’m feeling that day.

Week 7 – SF Sun Finder Project Progress

Sat, 20 Apr 2013 15:46:00 +0000

Development progress has definitely been enlightening the last week and a half. I’ve summarized highlights that have taken place to show what I’ve gone through so far and an example path of developing a HB project.

At the end of week 6, I spent Thurs. playing with Balsamiq and mocking up all kinds of ideas. Friday, I spent the day catching up on emails and just getting things in order so I could think straight. Then all I did over the weekend was start setting up my virtual environment.

The Final Project Kick-off

Sat, 13 Apr 2013 07:07:00 +0000

It’s the end of week 6, and we are in the thick of our starting and/or working on the final project. It could be called a type of thesis, and as I mentioned in a previous post, it has caused a lot of excitement over what to do for a variety of reasons. This post is to covey two main points: what I’m doing and key points to get started.

Finding a Project

Sun, 31 Mar 2013 16:06:30 +0000

As we near the halfway mark of our program, the top of mind question is: ‘What project will I work on?’

It can be a stressful question when there is still so much to learn, there are concerns with picking something too simple or too complex, there are so many options to pick from, and that we know it will influence whether anyone at career day will invite us to interview.