Year One: My Coding Experience

My ode will be worth $1,000.

I love coding stories that are indie hackers-esque as they are always a great tale of human willpower. The formula for a great article would generally go

Individuals want to solve a problem + figure out how to make it + builds it = Starts a business out of it.

I got furloughed last year and decided here was my chance to stop flirting with this idea and take action. I wanted to have my own story that fell into that realm.

What do I end up doing?

Tutorial to build this CRUD app, or tutorial to build this app in 30 minutes, I signed up for a popular data science course and just kept moving. I’m feeling “good”, and I’m feeling like I’m achieving progress, but I’m aware that I can’t explain what I’m doing. I couldn’t answer one question in an interview(Although some may say that’s a completely different skill than coding in general). After 6–7 months, I have half-baked apps that “show” I can do various languages, but nothing is complete.

Welcome to Lixt:

I decided to keep it simple by building an app to solve a problem whenever I chose to purchase groceries, I would always pick up the wrong food.If I got the right grocery item, it would be the wrong brand. I’m strong in python, so I started to develop the API and decide to build the front-end with minimal experience with React or React-Native:

Blockers that came:

1. I don’t know how databases work; I know SQL, but I have no clue how to develop a database that can store information.
2. I didn’t know how to send data through headers or how that process works.
3. I didn’t realize there were much more errors than a 200 OK or 500 OK.
4. UUIDs, SQL triggers, the list can go on.
5. Reacting is hard. State management made me rethink the life choices I have made in the future.
6. Setting up your computer for React can be tricky; make sure you have an extra 40 GBs for your mac to download Xcode.

Debugging React can be tricky; by the time I’m writing this, I have found more accessible ways to debug problems. Stack overflow tends to get more challenging the more specific you tend to become, so learning to diagnose your problems is a skill.

API requests for normal user behavior. I wasn’t aware of how often API requests are being made as I scroll Instagram. As soon as you POST, I chose to GET the request that gives me what I just posted. I don’t POST and then hit the refresh button. That is not a typical UI experience.

Conclusion:

Till I did this project, I have never spent more than 1–3 days on a project. Suppose I felt uncomfortable on a project. I would leave it and move to another youtube video. It took me around 2.5 months to complete this “simple” app. I felt that I made more robust connections to how an app works as a whole. I plan to continue my education in this format and use those quick 30-minute tutorial projects as handshake introductions towards the language.

I’m always looking to meet more engineers in my field, find me on Linkedin and let’s connect!