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Nikema
Nikema

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Collab Lab - That's a Wrap

The last few weeks of The Collab Lab were super busy for me and I fell off of my documenting the journey. TLDR; It was a great experience that gave me a confidence boost as a developer. I know I can work on a distributed software engineering team because I've done it!

I took the lead for the design of our app. I think it turned out pretty ok.

screenshot of smart shopping list app

Taking the lead on this actually meant I did it on my own. The rest of the team was working on the last pieces of logic to make the smart shopping list work.

You can see the deployed app here - https://tcl-3-smart-shopping-list.netlify.com/

GitHub logo the-collab-lab / tcl-3-smart-shopping-list

Cohort 3’s version of the Smart Shopping List app

Overview

The goal of this project is to create a “smart” shopping list app that learns your buying habits and helps you remember what you’re likely to need to buy on your next trip to the store.

How it works is that you will enter items (e.g., “Greek yogurt” or “Paper towels”) into your list. Each time you buy the item, you mark it as purchased in the list. Over time, the app comes to understand the intervals at which you buy different items. If an item is likely to be due to be bought soon, it rises to the top of the shopping list.

The app will work in many of the same ways as iNeedToBuy.xyz (on which our project is based) with the exception that we will not be implementing barcode scanning (that feature would add a lot of scope to the project and in my experience wasn’t…

I didn't make it through the last retro without crying. I have a lot going on in my life right now and not many of those things are putting much-needed money in my pocket. It always touches me to hear that people see how hard I'm working and appreciate my contributions.

The greatest thing I'm taking away from this experience is the sense of what kinds of work feels the most energizing and enjoyable for me.

I got to practice a lot of written communication in PRs, wikis, and commit messages. Turns out I love that and it's a needed skill as a professional developer.

I also really enjoy working on the UI and UX. It feels good to make something look good. It's another kind of problem-solving and the problem-solving aspect of programming is an intrinsic motivation for me to do it. I have a lot of fun with it.

👆🏾 Past Nikema was not so sure about React and web development.

I came in not feeling like I knew I wanted to work in software development at all. I know now, I love this stuff. I guess this community is stuck with me.

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Top comments (2)

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segdeha profile image
Andrew Hedges

I guess this community is stuck with me.

So glad to be stuck with you! I’m also so proud and impressed by what you accomplished within Collab Lab. You’re clearly a skilled developer and a collaborative teammate.

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nikema profile image
Nikema

Thanks again, Andrew. I feel really close to things getting better. I won't know what to do with myself when I get a decent paying job.