I've just finished the second week of the back-end block, and wow it was a tough week! So many ups and downs across the week as a whole, and also within each day.
In short what I'll say about this week is that it has been a challenge, and that's recognised by all of the tutors at Northcoders that this is one of the hardest weeks on the whole course. As next week we're going to be recapping all of this content to cement the knowledge a little more.
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What I've learnt this week
Node Postgres
The week started off with a solo sprint, covering Node Postgres which is a collection of modules that make it easy to commnuicate with the PSQL databases we were setting up. All in all, this day flew by and it was the first time I fully completed a sprint, both solo and paired, so I felt really good about the way I was handling back-end!
Supertest, Error Handling, and Routers
Next up, I spent two days pulling my hair out over integrating supertest into our tests to make use of integration testing over the unit tests we've previously been focused on. As well as error handling with Express, and establishing routers into our repo's. All at the same time as juggling structuring our repo's in the MVC (Model, View, Controller) pattern.
It's safe to say my head was spinning after cramming all of that into two days, and feeling like I had to adjust my entire way of thinking. I think I spent the best part of two days on help Zoom's with the amazing tutors, and venting to other students about it all the way.
Seeding and Creating Complex Queries
Having spent the past two days spiraling and feeling like I'm getting nowhere, I decided to ask that I could work alone for this pairs sprint, because I knew I didn't have a solid understanding of what was going to be asked of me that day, and didn't want to hold anyone back where they may have felt confident, and also partially becasue I had a great deal of anxiety about it and knew I didn't want to spend the best part of two days feeling useless again.
I think I definitely made the right call on this just taking some me time, because I actually spent most of the first day of the sprint, going back over the content from the previous sprint, to have a solid foundation of what's to come. Learning to re-seed the database with each of the tests and using JavaScript to make SQL commands was great fun, and brilliant way to mesh the two languages. As well as getting to make some more complex queries to the database, by appending operations like ORDER BY and parameter like ASC and DESC to sort them in various ways.
Resources I've found useful this week
W3Schools
Similar to last week, W3Schools is an briliant resource for JS and SQL queries, as well as many other languages.
Node-Postrgres
The docs for the node-postgres modules are also fantastic for the work we've been doign this week.
Northcoders Notes
Consistently, just going back over the notes that have been written for us is fantastic, because there's been several times where I've gone back and re-read the notes ina completely new light, and that clarity is great.
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