Project 1, Developer Portfolio

Where to begin?

In case I didn’t mention this on here already, my goal for 2020 is to work on at least 6 software projects in 12 months. I will also try to compete in coding competitions that I have the time for and continue to mentor a FRC robotics team (my life will be hectic but in a good way). The first project is to create a single page developer portfolio in ReactJS complete with functional and unit tests. There will also be some easter eggs added in to make it a unique build. :)

My approach is to create it in an agile manner with Minimal Viable Products and iterations. The testing will be a mix of Test Driven Development and tests created after implementation to make sure nothing is missed.

So far I have used React Routers to achieve a single page website and have learned how to test this functionality. This was accomplished using the React testing library mocking the router. This way of testing is somewhat similar to the tests I have done in C# but I learned I need to read and practice a lot more of JS testing if I want accurate tests that pass!

I have also added in buttons for my social media on the home page and created a basic contact form but only the front end. There have been some issues with the backend that is partly due to the application not being hosted as of yet.

If I can takeaway anything from the project so far, it is to look for the simple solution first. I have been testing out different ways to implement cards and my first idea was to do this with JS. While that works, it looked to be quite a bit as there was still html and css needed. Then I looked a bit more and realized it can be done with just html and css in a much easier way. I need to remember that this project isn’t to test my skill in JS but web development in general. That and always look for a simple solution to save myself the headache!

Thanks for taking the time to read this and I will see you on the flip side!