Endgame

Drum roll please…… The finale of this mammoth rollercoaster is grinding to a halt. The final week of the course is here and we’re all filled with excitement for how the week will pan out culminating with end of course presentations all via zoom of course due to social distancing rules. Coronavirus!! (cardi b scream)

The week started off with our timetables laid out for the week with a feature freeze happening on Tuesday! Therefore we were required to cease work on our projects and only refactor or polish what we had already produced. This didn’t give us a lot of time to add much more to our project but after a difficult first week we were progressing in the right direction and were feeling confident of our ability to finish our app to a good standard. As so often was the case for developing using Xcode nothing seemed to go to plan, from implementing functions to connecting and resizing elements. Running builds would sometimes take an inordinate amount of time depending on the machine we were testing on. At times the age old IT advice of turning it off and on again proved to be wise as Xcode would magically start running our builds without errors. Confusing and extremely frustrating when you are used to working in a reliable text editor such as VScode.

This project using firebase as our cloud database solution was also our first foray into non relational databases, a tricky concept to grasp which affected our planning of how the data would be stored and retrieved. We settled quickly into a chosen solution for how to set up our database essentially called collections, sub-collections and documents. Adding and retrieving information from the database was not as straightforward as it would have been as all the data was stored in a json format online. This involved us retrieving the data and parsing the relevant information into the correct fields displayed within our UI.

At one point it felt as though we were staring down the barrel of the gun with a broken app that we would have to present for final day. It wasn’t a nice feeling and we did everything in our power to get things up and running on the right track. Times were hard but we managed to pull through together and thats what this journey has been all about. As individuals we always want more even though we had already done so well in getting to grips with a new language and coding environment. That drive and wanting to do better drove us forward even at those low points when we refused to give in even with time against us. If nothing else it really showed us our true character and what we are actually made of. I’m proud of this group and cohort in general of what we have managed to achieve in the time we have spent together. It’s been the hardest thing I’ve ever done and the most stressed I’ve ever been in my life but also extremely rewarding. The hard work doesn’t stop here but the course has shown me the grit and resilience within myself I didn’t know I had. The course has given me the confidence to approach any coding and life problems I have with enthusiasm and a level head. Just because I don’t know how to do something now doesn’t mean I won’t very soon, this growth mindset that Makers has imparted is the most important lesson during all this.

On a final note I’d just like to give thanks to everyone who I worked with at Makers, including all the coaching staff who have been so supportive and ready for a chat about anything and everything. Once a maker always a maker!