Design and Development at Work (8 Weeks)
It has been a whirlwind 2 months since I first began my job as a senior developer. There has been a lot to process and there remains a lot I’ll need to learn, but I think that overall it is a mental hurdle, like most complex things are. Being able to simplify your ideas into code begins with analyzing the requirement of the task, and pulling out the critical pieces. For example, if you were tasked with creating a GradeBook that computes statistics. You have a noun and a verb, a naming convention and an action that gets executed, like a class and a function. This rant has been fueled by some of my first impressions on C# after about 3 hours of an online course on it.
In the beginning, I started working on a project that aggregates photos uploaded by users into a masonry-style grid layout that is mobile responsive. I spent a few weeks doing a re-design of the User Interface (UI), which involves auditing the font, colors, object styles, animations, and other elements. I also did surveys with some of my co-workers which involved me asking their opinion on both the UI and the UX (User Experience). It was good to have the opinion of first time users because they can find bugs and illuminate what is not clear when using the app. Once I finished with that I built a prototype of the app using Sketch and wire-framing different still images together to allow a user to click through and get a feel for the navigation.
Once that was complete, I began digging around in the code of the app. It is a huge app with tons of connections to databases, authorization, and system architecture. Luckily there is a team dedicated to making all of the packages install and everything run automatically through a Visual Studio Solution. (.SLN File)
The subsection that I would be working on was confined to the Web folder which contained an Angular 2 app (though it is in the process of going to 6). I took a few online courses on Angular and mostly understood haha. I understood the HTML, and CSS files most clearly and that’s what I experimented with. In this case, the original creator used a ton of in-line styles along with external style sheets so, I’m going to have to try my best to migrate as much as I can externally. I didn’t really touch the Typescript files because I wasn’t familiar enough to change any of it. I am currently taking courses to better understand the intricacies of object oriented program, it’s been a week and I’m still confused but I’m sure I’ll get it eventually.
From a less technical perspective, there have been a lot of meetings. Meetings through video chat, meetings where two boardrooms of people in two different locations are on video chat and someone is projecting their screen on a giant TV to show everyone a step by step tutorial of something. It’s interesting for me because my managers work mainly in another city, so only rarely do they visit our office so seeing them on TV most days and then in person has been kind of surreal, like they are a celebrity haha. There was even a cursed meeting (as we referred to it), where someone tried to demonstrate an API and could not overcome network issues.
All in all I’ve really enjoyed it so far, I’ve learned a lot and been challenged a lot. There is sometimes a daunting feeling of not knowing how to accomplish a certain task, but I would use stack overflow or some googling to figure things out and piece things together. Sometimes I’ve felt like I don’t know how to do anything, but I reflected and remembered that no one is born a developer and it takes time and experience to get better at it. It’s been important for me to be patient, and try to follow any unproductive days with more productive ones.
