Dev Updates: January
January was kind of intense, but I made it through!
While I did spend some hours during the Christmas break coding here and there, most of my time was spent on movie marathons with my family and eating delicious food. So it’s safe to say January was the last thing on my mind! Like many of you, the first week back at work was rough. I really had to put my head down to catch up with everything. I had a backlog of tasks left over from December, emails to respond to, new tasks to complete and just trying to get back into the swing of things. Though it was tedious, I tried my best and completed everything as well as I could.
As part of my current project, I created a User Interface(UI) that would be used internally by Fleetcor teams. While I have used React before, I am still a beginner, so there was a lot to learn and get my head around. Luckily for me, I’m on an apprenticeship course, so many times the work I do at Fleetcor overlaps or is adjacent to what I learn with my apprenticeship provider, Digital Native. I decided to use Material UI, a React library I hadn’t used before but got the hang of thanks to their comprehensive documentation. My UI had to go through many iterations before I created something that my team and Product Owner were happy with. To my surprise, I really enjoyed the process. The truth is, I had really never worked iteratively like this before, but the back and forth conversations I was having and Daily Stand-ups helped me stay focused and stick to the targets that were set. I’m starting to understand the practical benefits of being Agile and using SCRUM. There may be many more iterations to come and different features added to this UI in the future, but I was really proud of myself for successfully completing this section of the project.
As part of my studies with Digital Native, I’ve been learning more about SQL. We got to do this really fun activity a few weeks ago where we used SQL to solve a murder mystery! In the past, I’ve experimented with MYSQL databases and phpMyAdmin but not studied them extensively- so this was great opportunity to get a more comprehensive understanding.
Lastly I read a few more pages of The Phoenix Project which is only getting funnier as I read it. I found myself smiling and giggling at many of the unfortunate scenarios Bill finds himself in, yet also highlighting passages that are full of thoughtful advice on how to be more efficient at work, tech rules of thumb and pitfalls I should avoid as a junior programmer.
This February, I want to get back into the rhythm I had before Christmas and kind of start delving deeper into my work. January was really tough, however, I made more progress than I thought I would. Now February begins and I’m ready to take on whatever comes next.
