I was hungry for knowledge this week and ready to go. We dove into the interesting world of API’s. We were given an introduction to API’s and how they worked Monday in class. We were then told to build a program that fetched GitHub data about a user and displays that information to us. It was a great first exercise. It was a lot of fun learning about what you can do with an API and the information it gives you. We worked with other API’s as well. We created a high-frequency trading app (not one that you would want to actually use) this week as well. It would get information using Yahoo finances API and would give us information on buying and selling a stock if the price would raise/decrease. We built a weather app the gets information from the zip code the user enters. This was a really fun app to
build and helped me understand how to take the data received from the API and turn it into a JSON string. We can then take that JSON and display our information from the API to the user. I could go on and on about all the cool stuff we have been doing with API’S but I’ll move on for now.
I’m struggling with keeping my code organized and keeping track of where I am when I code. It’s hard to remember exactly where you left off at when you take a break from your project. I found that keeping a “captain’s log” of what you were doing and where you were in your code really helps out with that. In the next coming weeks, I really want to buckle down and having organized clean code. This is also the first week I didn’t get all my assignments completely finished. I’m going to take time from this upcoming weekend though to go back and make sure I get everything done.
One thing I really like about the code class is having other students there with me. It’s awesome being able to slack one of them, or the teacher, and ask for help trying to figure something out. We all work really well together and try and give each other tips and tricks along the way.
Even after three weeks, when you compile your code with no errors I still get a rush. It’s so rewarding seeing your code run error free. Watching something start from nothing and then seeing the actual program run is the best! You feel so accomplished getting everything to work. It’s also equally as frustrating to work for hours and get nowhere. The only advice I can give you is, be persistent. Keep plugging away at it and you will eventually figure it out.
It’s been a tough yet rewarding week. I can’t wait to dive into next week’s lessons on databases. Check back in next week as always for a look into week 4 at Origin Code Academy!