Lots of Progress this Week

I just finished up my work week, and I can safely say this was one of the most productive weeks I've had since I started working as a Software Developer. I would consider myself a junior developer, even though my title doesn't establish that. This means that I'm not at a level yet to be able to create my own projects off the top of my head. I need more guidance than a mid or senior-level developer would need, and I think that's implied with someone who's been coding for less than a year. This is a very difficult profession, and takes a lot of time and effort to get really good at it. I'm getting better, there's no doubt, but i still have a long ways to go. I think my company has taken these facts for granted and given me a little too much freedom to do what I think is best. I've repeatedly asked for guidance, and it hasn't always been answered with the information I need. I've relied heavily on my cohort for guidance as to which direction I should go, and he's done really well to keep me going. We've gotten a lot done since I started 2 months ago, and I think I've made the best of the situation. However, looking back, if I had as much structure as I've had this week, I would have produced twice as much. I don't think I'm going to be able to get the guidance I need from my superiors, so I'm going to have to keep relying on my cohort to point me in the right direction, and keep trying to figure things out on my own, as well. This has given me a good understanding of what I need going forward with future jobs and what constitutes a good team structure.

My cohort has been working on the React Native project for quite some time now, but he finally got me on board for this project on Tuesday. He set up a really good system to be able to develop across all platforms at once, which is really making things easier to work with. He also created some really useful custom hooks for dealing with the issues that arise with cross-platform development. Because of this, he has completely streamlined our output. It's still going to take a really long time to finish this project, and even when we roll out the first version, there are going to be a lot of subsequent versions to add more features. It's a great project with lots of learning opportunities, but it's a bit overwhelming at times. Looking at the big picture, I feel the weight of how much really needs to get done. We have just scratched the surface, and we've been working diligently all week. There is so much functionality that is going into this project, and we really haven't even started working on it yet. My cohort is actually starting to work on a calendar screen that is going to have a ton of functionality involved with it, but we also have an extensive search feature on another screen that is going to be epic. We've split the project up by screens so far, so he has the calendar and home screens, while I have the search and lead details screen. Again, for my part, the functionality hasn't even begun; I've just been working on the user interface.

One thing that has really helped me is having really nice wireframes for the project. We are using Framer to build up the user interface and sharing it between the 2 of us. I let him do all of the designing, since he has a much better eye for it than I do. Also, he started this project, and I feel like he has more ownership over it than I do. If I came in and started making demands over how I thought it should look, that could be taken the wrong way. Honestly, I really like the way he designs things, and I totally trust his judgment when it comes to these things. The search page was pretty simple to lay out, but I only got the very basic layout in place. It will get much more complex as we progress. At the end of the day today, I started laying out the cards for the search results. These are pretty simple to make, but again, the functionality involved with them is going to be extensive. We are going to have all different kinds of ways to interact with the UI and it's going to be pretty impressive. I spent the majority of the week working on the details page for each lead. This has 4 pages nested within it with a menu on the top to change between these pages. Each of these pages will be a list of information that can be edited, so each of these pages actually has 2 different ways it can be presented, one as a form, and one as plain information. I finished up 2 of the 4 sub-pages and the overall layout for the page, but still have 2 to go. The last 2 will be pretty easy to create compared to the other 2. Since we're developing across all platforms at the same time, building responsiveness right out of the gate is taking the most time. In the long run, though, this is going to save us so much time on the backend when we're ready to roll it out.

Until tomorrow!