Final Countdown
The final is here, I can’t believe it. Starting the course seemed a lifetime ago, I’ve learnt so much in a short span of time. Still not yet time for nostalgia as we still have a final project to take care of first along with a presentation. The week started off being split up into groups according to our preferences based on Friday’s ideation.
After a brief introduction to the timeline of events to occur for the final project duration we set off in our little groups to come up with ideas. As I was placed in a mobile, API group we set off individually to come up with ideas for what would be our final project along with the languages and technologies of how we would deploy it. We eventually decided on making an ios app based on a plant API which would provide recommendations depending on filters the user had selected. The name of our final project Choose My Plant of course what other name could there be? As we all had iphones and our project was to be mobile based we chose to use swift to build our app. A new language in itself but also using Apple’s XCODE development environment to write the code, so double the challenge as we had all been so used to using VScode previously.
For user authentication and databases we decided to go with Firebase as user authentication was built in and would help provide a more seamless experience working on the backend as a group. The first couple of days were slow and steady getting to grips with Xcode, swift and firebase. As we had no prior experience working with the named technologies it was a steep learning curve for all and even a struggle to download the Xcode as it required some of us to install and run the large development suite. We had learnt based on our last project working with Ruby on Rails to not start diagramming and planning the structure of our application as we were all unfamiliar with how swift worked. We all spent time as a group watching videos and reading a variety of resources to give us some understanding of how ios apps in general are structured along with how the different elements are linked together.
With a more solid base we began separating our tasks using a ticket structure on our trello board. This allowed us to break down each user story we had created into more manageable incremental steps. It was quite hard to gauge how long each task would take when working on something completely new. A big part of our project was also utilizing a plant API we had initially picked out during ideation and as we had very little experience making calls and returning data, this was also something we picked up early on as something that could be a stumbling block. In fact it took a whole day later in the week unsuccessfully trying to get the data back in the format we wanted. A tricky experience for sure and as each API is different it was proving challenging to find exactly what we needed in swift to extract the JSON. Eventually we managed to succeed with the help of a coach which was a real highlight for everyone as we had all worked so hard for over a day on API’s.
By the end of the week, I would say we already have a lot of functionality down for our app so are making really good progress, I’m so proud of our team and how we’ve supported each other with a clear direction and understanding of the codebase. I really feel the success of the group depends a lot of the direction and cohesion within the group. I have no doubts we will manage to have a fully functioning first app completed by the deadline, there was always a slight fear especially as people can get carried away with what they can produce in 2 weeks, that we might have bitten off more than we could chew. But that definitely doesn’t seem to be the case here, swift and XCODE have proved tricky and buggy at times to handle but through our collective efforts we have knocked down each wall that has stood before us.
I’m already looking forward to next week to really flesh out our features and polish up our project.
