After a little over 5 months, I have graduated from Thinkful and moved back to California! First of all, I’d like to give a shoutout to my old friend Elias, who introduced me to Thinkful, and my mentor, Rachel, who has been there to support and challenge me every step of the way.

TLDR:

Built Park Hopper MVP in 16 hours

Started applying for jobs and completing coding challenges

Attended Thinkful LA events

Summary of everything I’ve learned

Follow me on Twitter

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I took August 7–9 to work on moving back to LA from Vegas. I figured that once I was settled in, I’d be able to graduate without any hiccups. I was surprised to find out that there was an issue with my original Node capstone and that I’d have to create another one. At first, I was upset. Then, I realized that I had the opportunity to do something I’d never really done before: build a project really, really fast.

I was told to build an MVP for a simple CRUD app. After a quick brainstorming/de-scoping session, I went with Park Hopper, an app that would allow users to keep track of their Disneyland visits. I got the idea from my girlfriend who, like me, is a huge Disneyland enthusiast. Given that this was the first time I had to complete an MVP in a pinch, I was satisfied that it only took 16 hours total. Here’s the breakdown of my workflow:

Thursday 8/10 — Built HTML wireframes for both pages and setup the server and test environments, including installing all anticipated Node packages. Setup continuous integration with Travis CI and Heroku ( 5 hours )

) Sunday 8/13 — Built the client side JS with mock data and built my database/routes with all applicable normal-case tests. Replaced mock data with data from the API once it was completed. ( 7 hours )

) Monday 8/14 — Styled both client-side pages with a fully responsive design (4 hours)

This was a great workflow! Building the wireframes in HTML gave me a content-driven skeleton from the very beginning. Setting up CI prior to building my API made it easier to avoid complications once my app grew. Setting up my client-side JS with mock data made it very clear what data I’d need in my API, minimizing the time I spent planning/building it. Once it was time to style, a systematic workflow (align text first, add photos, pick a color palette, select fonts, adjust as needed) made the process relatively seamless. I highly recommend this work flow for any new developers challenged with building their first full-stack app. Having a plan from the start makes the entire process much easier to navigate.

Now that I am back in California, applying for jobs is part of my everyday routine. One of the skills tests I was tasked with completing, was to convert a PSD file (PhotoShop Document, if you’re like me and didn’t know what that meant) to HTML and CSS. The design looked like a typical, modern webpage. The catch was that I was given only an hour to complete it. Unbeknownst to me, building Park Hopper was tremendous preparation for this challenge!

This past week, I got to meet some people from Thinkful in real life! Elias and I went to a dinner for students and mentors in the LA area. On Tuesday, Elias gave an open-to-the-public lecture on HTML and CSS, where I got to volunteer as a TA. Meeting industry professionals and helping people less experienced than me was a priceless experience. Thinkful has a lot of events in the LA area, and it was great to be able to put some faces to names. It was a great confirmation that I made the right choice to move when I did. Which is good, because there’s no turning back now!

Points if you recognize this kid!

Prior to Thinkful, the only thing I could build was an extremely basic, static webpage with HTML, CSS, and a little bit of jQuery. Here’s a summary of everything I’ve learned:

HTML. Like, semantic HTML

CSS tricks, like how to build my own Bootstrap-like grid system

jQuery, built in efficient, reusable ways

AJAX and 3rd-party APIs

Node/Express

MongoDB/Mongoose

PostgreSQL/Sequelize

React/Redux

Proper version-control with Git

Continuous Integration with Travis CI

Deploying to services like Heroku and Netlify

Computer Science fundamentals for technical interviews

Not only have I built live apps using all of these technologies, the experience of having built these apps has granted me the confidence to discuss these concepts in-depth. Every project presented its own unique challenges; overcoming them has made me a stronger developer. There is a good chance that I would have eventually learned these skills on my own, but Thinkful gave me to structure to learn them quickly, as well as a tangible milestone at which I could start applying for jobs.

I’m grateful that Rachel encouraged me to write these Medium posts. They have been a fun and powerful way for me to keep track of my weekly progress. It’s also been a great way to get in touch with other people in the Dev community! Thank you to everyone who has read these posts and encouraged me to keep writing. I will continue to write these as often as I can! Also, be sure to follow me on Twitter!