One Year On GitHub!

Hello friends — This week I will celebrate my official 1 year GitHub-iversary!

Just over a year ago, I had decided (and been slightly convinced by some of my friends who have been developers for years) to take some free online coding classes in preparation for a bootcamp. I decided on Flatiron School’s immersive full stack engineering program, and found my starting points with things like codecademy.com, freecodecamp.com and the grasshopper app on my iPhone. As I began the pre-work for Flatiron School, it seemed fairly simple, although at that time I still often fell victim to overthinking, getting frustrated, and refusing to walk away when a problem arose.

Today I simply wanted to share some of my favorite GitHub repos, video overviews, and lessons that I’ve learned along the way.

Lessons

Some of the most important lessons I learned were:

1. Think about the problem in smaller chunks. If trying to go from 0 to hero, it’s easy to get caught up in the end goal, and lost in how to actually make it happen. Most problems can be broken down into simpler chunks that make the overall solution much easier to reach by maintaining a simpler flow of smaller, less complex steps.
2. Don’t get frustrated, or at least try not to let your frustration cloud your head. It can feel easy to fall into a mode of frustration, trying different things, essentially throwing code at the problem hoping something sticks. Just remember to breath, relax, and take it easy. Finding a solution is going to be much harder when you panic, or let your frustration get the best of you.
3. If a problem persists (and time allows).. take a step back! Walk away for a while, or for the day. I can recall multiple times I sat there coding away at something for hours, getting frustrated, and starting to feel down about not being able to figure something out, only to take a break (or a sleep session), and come back later to figure it out quickly and easily.
4. Code OFTEN. It’s wild how the human brain works, and if you are able to maintain a regular pattern of coding every day, or at least 4–5 days a week, you will certainly remember more, learn more, and continue to develop your skills. Shortly after graduating from bootcamp I had a 12 day trip planned to raft the Grand Canyon, and obviously took that time to celebrate the intense experience and success of graduating an immersive bootcamp program.. after less than 2 weeks of not coding, I felt like I needed to go back to school to get my chops back. Keep on coding!!!

GitHub Repos

My favorite personal builds so far are all pinned on my GitHub, but I’ll include a quick summary and links to my top 3 here as well:

Lyricize: Lyricize is a web app designed for song writers to write better lyrics, and get inspired. While users can search for and view lyrics for most popular and some not so popular songs, the main feature is a helper tool that can generate random words or genres for inspiration, and has 14 stackable inputs to find rhymes, alliterations, similes, etc.

Notify: It’s .. definitely NOT Spotify! But, you CAN log in with your Spotify account, search for artists/ songs, click a result to play it, AND see the lyrics! You can also view your real playlists, create new playlists, select a playlist by clicking on its card, and add the currently playing song to the selected playlist.

Mode-ify: Musicly’s Mode.ify is a web app designed for musicians to write more complex chords and progressions, making their music more interesting, and invoke more emotion. The main feature is a piano that can be played on your computer keyboard, with a chord builder and chord progression builder, and several suggestion modes that suggest more complex chords, or chords that fit within the key you’re in.

Videos

All of my project recaps can be found on my YouTube Channel, with more coming soon!

Cheers everyone, thanks for tuning in, and I’ll be back again soon to cover more coding concepts!