Can’t “Make-Up” My Mind And Figure Out What I’m Doing Wrong!

After 4 weeks of being a full-time student at Flatiron School, of which I love, I’ve learned tons about what it means to be a student, to learn and to keep the end goal in mind at all times.

At the beginning of this project, I wanted to do sort of a “Coffee Shop App” where users can set up a subscription box but I couldn’t find a working API for it. Then I came across this Make Up Foundation API here that had everything that I needed to set up a successful application for this project. I liked the idea that I’d be making something similar to an online shopping store such as Ulta or Sephora (even though this project is very barebones to that).

To start, I want to define the following terms so you guys can get a good grasp of what I’m talking about.

What is CLI?

Command Line Interface (CLI) are basically little gems that help you make your text tell programs what to do and this comes in handy when building applications.

What is an API?

An application programming interface (API) is a computing interface which defines interactions between multiple software intermediaries. It defines the kinds of calls or requests that can be made, how to make them, the data formats that should be used, the conventions to follow, etc. (Wiki)

At first, it seems like a huge project that needed to be tackled step by step. I started planning the project as soon as possible so that I had the extra time to ask questions or tweak whatever needed to be tweaked.

I wanted to share the 3 things I struggled and 3 things I felt were successes throughout this project.

1. First was overcoming the intimidating scope of the project and planning and breaking the steps down so I’m not overwhelmed by how many things were needed.
2. There was this strange fear that I got to a milestone where my project was almost complete and then I realized I had to add a save method. At first I was trying to figure out the placement of where to put the save method. It started with me creating this very difficult method and a grand idea that was a lot more simple than what I thought. After careful planning and placement, I sensed my code was going to work but it didn’t, then an instructor pointed out that I did not have the correct argument. Super simple fix.
3. At the start of the project, my idea was a 2-level deep project that would have been exceeding the requirements. Which is good to go above and beyond but with a limited time and a limited knowledge and experience, what I originally thought of doing would have taken me a lot more headache and time to try to finish. Another instructor told me that it’s better to simplify my project and then from there, I had to work backwards. I tried to change methods and change variables eventually it was easier if I started the whole thing over. Which seemed hard at first because I was about 2 days deep into the project at this point and did not want to re-do everything. But I did. I was upset at first but had to take overcome this step-by-step, method-by-method.

These were the major problems I had with this project but it felt good to overcome them.

3 Major Successes I had with this project.

1. Finishing the project. Seeing the work and effort after a month of getting through Phase 1 and being able to show my mom my first completed project.
2. To write and apply a method on my own without breaking the code!
3. Lastly, understanding every part of the project because it was everything I learned and was able to put it together.

Overall, I’m satisfied with my project. I understand that it’s only the beginning of my career in Software Development and I’m waiting to add the rocket fuel to my future projects.

Thank you for viewing my project, Alicia Weenum

Project — https://github.com/CodeMama96/MakeUpFoundation.git

11/13/2020

Code Templates for reference:

Flatiron School Instructors:

Jenn Hansen — https://github.com/hansenjl/drinkmaster

Nick Lunn — https://github.com/nicklunn325/cli_project.git