Final Project

Week 11 is the penultimate week at Makers, the first half of the final project. This was the hardest week at Makers; huge self-imposed pressure about the importance of having a 'successful' last two weeks, making a great product, demonstrating every best practise possible, giving a glossy presentation, learning something new under a deadline, and the unknown of job searching looming ahead... 😱

💡 My team comprises purely of female developers. This is great: women in tech! Although it comes with added pressures: if we don't do well, we could be judged more harshly or dismissed as making something rubbish because of our gender, or, just having extra pressure of thinking we have to represent all wimmin.

Teams were announced on Monday morning; I was placed in a team of four with the goal of using the skills we'd learned and practised throughout the course to build a mobile app.

The first day was exhausting and full of decision making. As a new team, we hadn't developed our dynamic yet. Each person has ideas about what kind of app they want to make, so taking time to clarify our personal project goals and to shortlist our preferred ideas and technology was important for us. We shared what a well functioning team looked like, noting how we would work together - I highly recommend doing this, to get clarity, direction, and to make the team feel safe, productive, and like a team.

We decided to make a physiotherapy tracking app which would be built with React Native. Next week I'll reflect on how the build went!

By the weekend the pressure of the week was exhausting. Reflecting on how unhelpful this was, I took a break (I have the rest of my life to build great software after all), and looked into some questions about React Native in 20 minute bursts.

Misc.

🌈 Experienced a psychedelic visual migraine for the first time

🙏 Thanks to Germane for helping us write some tests with Jest and Enzyme

🥚 Breakfast kick-offs can be delicious

🐝 quii also decided to learn React Native; we're going to work on a side project together after the course