I wanted to take on a larger project to take to improve my skills. There was so much to take into consideration. The questions I asked in my head:
- What is the purpose?
- What features will be included?
- How will it be installed for desktop?
- How much technical debt will I have in the future?
With so many questions other questions to be answered. I needed to create a plan.
The Design
I started to sketch the layout of the dashboard menu. I had to research on designs on what I can do based on my skill set. Then I had to download icons for details. I created the dashboard menu with Swing and WindowBuilder.
The Methods
For each application I planed by creating UML diagram to see what methods I need. This is where most of the work goes into. From menu navigation to add and removal methods for the address book and to-do list features.
Hundreds and thousands lines of code
It was a big jump to start writing small programs and applications to writing 500+ lines of code in a month. Doing pull requesting and pushing new changes.
Creating and Connecting a database
Using a database is something I don't do often, so this was a new learning experience dealing with databases.
Continuous testing
For each feature, I had to test out to make sure it was working properly. There is still rough patches that I'm working through to make sure there is no errors. It takes time and thought process, but it improved my debugging skills.
Learning from mistakes
Making mistakes is common throughout this whole thing. This leads into finding new solutions.
Building a software from scratch using java has helped me learned new concepts. It a way to prepare building a large code base.
Top comments (0)