This week was another 4 day week, thanks to the bank-holiday Monday we had, whilst I was itching to get going this week, it was really refreshing to split two distinct parts of the bootcamp up, by having a long weekend.
This week is the start of the back-end block, and just like the JavaScript fundementals block it will last for 3 weeks, and oh boy has it been a fun start to the world of backend!
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What I've learnt this week
Node HTTP
We started our first week in back-end off by creating our own local servers using the node HTTP module, whilst it was fun to start the back-end section, I couldn't help but think there was better way to do this every step of the day.
Express.js
As is common now at Northcoders, we get shown a way to accomplish a goal, usually in a legacy or verbose way, that we can then build upon the fundemental understanding with frameworks or modern tools that can improve your workflow as a developer. This is especially true of the idea of moving from Node's HTTP module, to something like Express.js. We started out by refactoring our code from Day 1, but in a way that uses Express to make the whole process a little less bloated.
MVC Pattern
We also spent some time learning about the MVC pattern and implementing the ideas into some working examples. The MVC has been good to learn because a concern of mine was with how needlessly large some of the files were becomming for our app sprints.
Introduction SQL
Wow! I really enjoyed starting to work with SQL, its been great to take a small break at the back end of this week, and dip my toes into the luke warm waters of another language. I can for sure see why many people on the course preferred to not do the SQL stuff, but I actually really enjoyed it.
Resources I've found useful this week
SQLBolt
For sure, SQLBolt was a lot of fun, and for me a great way of picking up the basics of SQL in small chunks and easily digestible. My only advice is get a solid understanding of the difference of longitude and latitude, because in my head the words kind of mesh together and lose all meaning (just because I was fidelling around with the longitude/latitude challenge for ages).
Insomnia
Insomnia was great for sending and receiving data to the local servers we were creating and display all the info I need at this stage in a really simple way.
Express.js and Node HTTP docs
The Express docs and the Node HTTP docs have been great for answering queries in a quick way as usual with all of the relavant docs to all of the tech we've used so far at Northcoders.
W3Schools
W3Schools is an absolutely fantastic resource for any JS and SQL queries, as well as many other languages.
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