Name: toucans-15
Owner: Chingu Voyage 3
Description: null
Created: 2017-11-30 19:18:34.0
Updated: 2018-01-09 15:01:12.0
Pushed: 2018-01-23 00:10:47.0
Homepage: null
Size: 414
Language: CSS
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See our finished project here: https://chingu-voyage3.github.io/toucans-15/
Read this intro for the outline of our project and then read below for our individual experiences with Chingu.
We met each other and started our project on December 5, 2017 and finished on January 20, 2018. Over that time we collaborated via the Slack and GitHub platforms to take an example website and clone it following Chingu's very helpful roadmap. We met for the first time over video chat (where Carolyn stepped up to accept the Project Manager role when no one else wanted it) and then planned to meet every Wednesday (video meeting) and Sunday (Slack chat) evening until we finished the project. We didn't meet every time that we planned to and we never met over video again, but we did finish our project. We used our regular Slack meetings to delegate tasks and then report back about how well they were (or were not) going. Often we would keep in contact between our frequent meetings because we were excited about figuring something out or needed some help. We decided to use the Projects and Issues tabs in our GitHub repository to manage the project because we were already in GitHub and it kept us from adding another software to the project. After setting our project in place, we all committed to coding sprints in which we accepted tasks to complete that would move us closer to our MVP. We also made a lot of progress early, which was nice because it allowed us some time off for the holidays/new year and gave us some time at the end to receive feedback, make changes based on that feedback, and work out some of the trickier issues we came across.
Some things about our project:
This is the first time I?ve ever worked on a coding project with strangers around the world, let alone collaborate with strangers on anything. It?s been a really cool experience watching our project grow from a black and white html page to a perfect copy of the TickyBot site! There are a lot of great resources out there that allows anyone to learn how to code - I?ve used these resources for the past year. While it?s great that information is so accessible, I?ve run into issues as a junior newbie developer. It?s hard to keep myself accountable to learn when it?s just me learning by myself. And learning from tutorials is not the same as actually doing something. I don?t think there?s anything quite like Chingu out there. I?ve learned the most in a short amount of time, because I had a group that counted on me to finish my assigned task and I was had to learn things on the spot in order to complete the project. I was really lucky to be part of a hard working group.
I have to admit that I was pretty much terrified before the project started. It was refreshing to see that each member of our team had the same feeling coming in. Our first discussion was fruitful, and we were able to communicate easily for the entirety of the project. During this experience my CSS skills increased tremendously, GIT became less of a mystery, and I used external JavaScript libraries for the first time. External libraries had been something that had intimidated me for a while, GIT too, for that matter. Two pieces of advice I have heard endlessly from tech professionals were very well represented in the Chingu-Voyage:
The Voyage was the first time I had ever maintained a project on GitHub with other developers. This brought out a range of emotions from me that must be familiar to every newbie out there. ?Will this mess up someone else's code? ?This solution isn?t good enough to push yet?, ?What did my team member do?!?? and a range of other exclamations. My team was able to discuss all changes and come to efficient solutions that respected all inputs and points of view. Also the magic of GIT being able to shoot changes directly into my computer from across the world was, and is, pretty incredible and I?m still super into it.
For the first time, I was able to see how a project comes to life step by step. My team was jubilant with each milestone we hit, and slowly but surely we started nailing down the specifics of the clone. It eventually truly became our own creation, and we relied on the original site less and less for guidance. The speed with which I learned new concepts increased tremoundaly due to the pressure of trying to keep up with my teammates. The lessons I learned in CSS, JS and GIT were more deeply ingested due to the struggle of hitting a wall and working for hours to solve it on my own. The project was about problem solving and communication the whole way through, and it was the most challenging and rewarding experience I?ve had so far in tech.
Looking back now, I can?t believe how much I?ve learned in such a short period of time. I fully plan on doing another voyage in the future, but for now I want to take my win with me and apply its lessons towards building my own projects. Thanks to Chingu, this step does not seem as daunting.
I applied for Chingu through the Chingu cohort website in a fit of courage/desperation because I didn't know anyone who was trying to learn coding/programming and was coming to the realization that I needed some community if I was to make it through to where I wanted to go. About a week after I applied I saw Chance post in a freeCodeCamp forum that applications were being accepted and that it's best to follow up with him because it's possible some applications could be lost in the process. I decided not to follow up and figured that might be the last I heard of it. A few weeks later I received the acceptance email and nervously awaited the beginning of the voyage. I can say now that this experience has pushed me further toward pursuing coding community (both online and hopefully soon in person) than I ever thought I'd find myself and I am very grateful for that.
I remember reading Chance state somewhere before I started Voyage 3 that the biggest skill we would learn was collaborating on a project with other developers. I also remember thinking “but we'll learn to code too, right?” I couldn't possibly understand just how important the skills of collaboration, communication, Git, and version control were until I was into the Voyage, and Chance was right – those are the most important skills I am taking from this experience. I have never looked at another person's code with the intent of collaboration, critique, or editing before, and that was such a good experience for a code newbie to have. I think it helped me learn to see how someone else approaches a problem and then accept their solution or work together toward what might be a better solution. I am also grateful to have had the experience of building something from beginning to end, which I had never really done before. Similar to Lennyroy, this has given me a little boost toward working on “build-to-learn” projects of my own and I am excited to continue on with this practice. Outside of these skills, I also learned a lot about CSS (particularly Grid, media queries, and animations), SVGs, and some ways of integrating JavaScript (vanilla, jQuery, and the SmoothScroll library – probably overkill, but we're still figuring it out) into a site to create interactions for the user. This has been the best short-term learning experience I could have hoped for and I feel very lucky to have been grouped with great learning partners. If you're reading this and wondering if you should apply for Chingu, do it!