Week 13 has finished and the first of the final course at the Coding Dojo, Projects and Algorithms, is over. This has been a very exhausting week and if it wasn't for the intermissions where I reflected on the reason and value I find in my commitments (Dojo, Hackathon, Personal, etc.) then I would quickly find myself burnt out. The most challenging week yet is behind me, and I am glad I found the mental and emotional strength to push through the difficulties this last week presented.
Only 3 weeks are left. Welcome to the technical recap where I'm talking about the technical learnings, projects, and more for the coding side of what I'm learning. If you want week 13's non-coding stuff, you can find it here.
<usual_enterance> If you're new here I'm creating this blog series as I go from coding newbie to working in web3. I'm creating this to reflect on the technical and non-technical growth and to leave it behind for others who might be interested in how they can follow a similar path. </usual_enterance>
In this week's technical recap:
- Projects & Algorithms
- CryptoZombies
- Projects
- Chainlink Spring Hackathon
- What's Next?
Projects & Algorithms
Projects & Algorithms is the final course for the Coding Dojo and encompasses four weeks of reviews, algorithm practice, interview prep, and building two projects that are meant to reflect what we have learned and showcase something new we are attempting to learn.
This was week 1.
Wireframes
Covered the basics of creating a wireframe, provided detailed examples, and were required to submit a wireframe with our proposal for the solo project we intend to create to graduate from the boot camp
Basics Reviewed
The course also started with a review of the basics of algorithms including; variables, data types, equals, console, functions, conditionals, nesting, loops, and parameters.
Fundamentals Reviews
Following up on the basics, the materials reviewed; return values, arrays, values in arrays, math library, and variables.
Arrays
Here the materials took a deep dive into arrays to understand what we can do to manipulate them and how to read them. This is also where the practice problems started to build competency and prepare for algo-centered interviews.
Test-Driven Development
The process is about building a test that fails and then writing enough code to pass and repeating. This technique is particularly important (mandatory) in smart contract development. I’ve recently heard that there are parallels that could be drawn between sc dev and hardware development because once it’s out there, there’s no changing it.
CryptoZombies
I couldn't help myself, I've got an endless list of other things to work on but I still found myself starting the CryptoZombies learnings during my lunch breaks at work (does that help justify including it when I would otherwise just watch anime?). I'm putting a hard cap on the time I devote here and I quit for the day after I finish a course, so I've only made it through the first two courses which is a perfect rate for me when I have to mange the boot camp learnings, open projects, and the hackathon (and I consider the hackathon to be incredibly important right now).
Projects
Bootcamp Algorithms
Tagline: This is a collection of code for the Coding Dojo Bootcamp, Algorithm course assignments. This course is the final component in conjunction with two projects to graduate from the boot camp.
Got to work on arrays assignments; in truth, this has been a rough start. Constructing the algorithms has tripped me up and I'm not sure why, it could just be that my brain is exhausted by the end of the workday and when I switch into this I have a hard time focusing. I'm running through some of free code camps algo basics content to hopefully comprehend the material better.
The repo.
Learn Web3
Tagline: This site is a collection of resources intended to assist in developing a person's understanding of the web3 space. Resources include podcasts, newsletters, and discord communities. This project is being developed as a component of the Projects & Algorithms course, the final in the Coding Dojo boot camp.
Lots of progress here in the first week, having built out the Flask app, and database with MySQL, front- and back-end code. Have not had time to work on the documentation yet but I will pause to do so soon. This is the end of week one, I have one more week to get this thing to version1 before presenting it.
The repo.
Personal Portfolio Website
Tagline: The personal portfolio website hosts all relevant information about my project and professional history as well as some additional information for people looking to learn more about me.
Some updates to the content and styling to ensure it's fully up to date. I had to request a transfer for the domain hosting provider and that's taken some time. Unlocking the domain to prep it for transfer took a couple of days and now that it's migrating it's taking several more days. However, once this process is finished, and as long as the files are set up correctly, the portfolio should go live! Once I've ensured that I understand how to manage the server with HostGator then I can get to work with transitioning it into a Flask app.
The repo.
Doors vs Wheels
Tagline: A TA from the Coding Dojo and I are building a website that is requesting data from users about how many doors and wheels they have in their homes as part of a TikTok trend.
I have not spent time working on this myself, because of other projects but progress was made with some of the fron-end by the collaborator with both front- and back-end.
The repo.
Algo Practice
Tagline: A collection of code snippets created by me while practicing prompts provided by websites like codewars.com.
Very little progress was made here this week, most of the algo practice went to the boot camp's algo assignments.
The repo.
Chainlinks Spring Hackathon
The team is back to being fully staffed with five members now working on the project. A clickable prototype is finished, functionality is being built, and smart contracts are starting. You can see in the non-technical recap that I've gone through all of the non-code along webinars from Chainlink for the hackathon at this point. I haven't been able to do the code alongs to improve my #blockend skills because I'm under considerably constrained time and my roles so far in the project are mostly project management and categorically web2 content. The team is making great headway in the project so far, we're attempting to coordinate a full team meeting but 5 people with 5 different schedules makes it VERY challenging, so thankfully we have until May 27th to finish and any hiccups along the way can be worked out without too much cause for concern.
What's Next?
As you can see, there's plenty more to continue working on for the hackathon and the boot camp. This last week was unquestionably stressful, but I've been informed by the instructors that the remaining portion of the boot camp eases up with moving into a group project so that should take the edge off. I'll continue to focus on the secret hackathon project and Learn Web3 site while keeping up with assignments this week and all the non-technical stuff.
If you'd like to join the learning community I'm building on Discord for web3, you can find the link for that here. It's a space that I am trying to build for myself and others to share their growing knowledge of all things web3.
You can also find me here:
LinkedIn | GitHub | Twitter | My Website
