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!
Nikema Prophet@dev_nikema
16:52 PM - 09 Feb 2020Stacie Taylor-Cima @the_real_stacieToday is the last day of TCL-3 & im feeling all the feels. Can’t wait to see the final demo this afternoon! ✨💯🥂 If you’re looking to add some truly incredible people to your team, look no further than these developers: @dev_nikema @_amberjiles_ @johnsondmonica @mike_ramirez https://t.co/IR6QOncBBh
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I took the lead for the design of our app. I think it turned out pretty ok.
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/
the-collab-lab
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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.
Nikema Prophet@dev_nikemaTime to stop pretending to like React and web development. Honestly, it doesn't spark joy and I refocused on it because that was the only track available with the scholarship I received. Time and focus are precious and finite. I strive to do things I enjoy as often as possible17:20 PM - 02 Dec 2019
👆🏾 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.
Top comments (2)
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.
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.