My time at Makers Academy has now been over for several weeks. I had hoped for a slight reduction in intensity but that is yet to happen.
At the end of week 12 we had our graduation day. We were told that we were now fully fledged developers, albeit at a junior level but no longer apprentices. The nice thing about this was that I believe it. It seams amazing that we could have progressed so much in twelve weeks but when I look at what I was doing before I realise we have.
First up I took a week off, this I would recommend to anyone following. It helps to remember that a Saturday needn’t be spent watching a rails tutorial. So I saw some friends in France and Switzerland and that was all very nice. I discussed the merits of Test Driven Development and Pair Programming with a friend of mine in academia and in return he introduced me to 2048. If you haven’t found this yet its probably best to stay that way.
Back to work and the first thing I wanted to tackle was consolidating my knowledge from the course. There were tasks I did not manage to complete as well as many helpful resources that I want to go over. For an idea of just how many useful resources we collected over the 12 weeks check out this repository were we have consolidated some.
Next up was cleaning my Github account. (yes I know this should have happened as I went along). This was the only thing on my list that took less time that expected. I had been trying to write sensible README’s as I went along and in most cases a quick overview is all that is required.
Of less importance but most fun was exploring brand new things. Continuous integration is something we heard and I have enjoyed experimented with Codeship. Also automated code review for which I have experimented with Codeclimate. These are both really easy to integrate with Github and I was able to set-up both of these and complete a web based fizzbuzz kata in under 30 mins. To start serious TDD with JavaScript I have explored using Bower, Karma, Grunt, Yeoman and Jasmine-Jquery. All of which are worthy of there own blog post.
With all of these to do’s now under control, about three weeks after graduating, I can start to make meaning full progress on finishing off my London Layout App. Thankfully with my new expertise what were serious problems before Makers I can now easily overcome.
And finally I need to become at least a little bit employed. The journey was fun but rather pricey. I have talked to two friends about websites they’ve had build and in both cases I have been able to confidently say “Yes I could build that”. Actually in both cases there were no test so I was able to say “I could build a more maintainable version than that one you paid for”. So need a website or app. Get in contact. Once London Layout is in the App stores I could be just the person you are looking for, here is my profile on our final project.