[At the F8 Facebook Developers Conferencebuilding with Tim Salau]

[Cool tech button I was gifted sitting on top of some of my notes!]

So my apprenticeship experience with Techtonica is coming to a close and maaaaaan has it been quite a ride! The last official date is July 20th, so we're about one month away--the final stretch! I have so many things to share and have no clue where I should start lol...for time purposes I'll share highlights, lows and highs alike.

[Picture with all ten Techtonica apprentices]

So from January to now, we've covered a bit of everything with the MERN Stack being the focal point. I think its safe to say at this point that I've never used as much of my brain capacity as I have while being in this program. I know that sounds bad, but you have NO idea just how mind-bendingly crazy this stuff can get! What I'll do is give you a brief run through of the complexities of it all and how it all comes together to give you some of your most favorite digital products.

A Brief Rundown:

So on what is called the Frontend or Client Side we have the languages HTML, CSS and JavaScript. I would describe HTML as sort of being like the skeleton of a website. It gives webpages their basic structure--the headings, a body and text that goes within each. So if HTML is the skeleton, that would make CSS something like the skin of a webpage or website providing the page with fonts, colors, etc. --basically it styles the page. HTML and CSS alone can make basic webpages, but if you want to give your page LIFE then you're going to need JavaScript. JavaScript is to me, something like the organs of the webpage, giving it functionality--the the ability to click on a picture and make it collapse or expand.

[Celebrating Pi-Day with my fellow apprentices]

And if that's not enough, take all of this and bump it up a step with creating a sign-in form and giving users the ability to log in and out of an account. This can be done using something called OAuth. Oh, you want to be able to save all of your users unique preferences and interactions with the site you say? Well this is where the Backend or Server Side comes into play. ExpressJS allows you to create the code you'll need to connect to something called a Database--this is where all of your "user data" will be stored.

I'm only scraping the tip of the surface with what I've just shared here with you all. If I attempted to touch on everything else--libraries, frameworks, algorithms, data structures, presentations, code challenges, technical interviews, data visualization, data migrations, agile development, test driven development, time and space complexity, object oriented programming--as you can see the post may never end! The deep dark coding abyss is real!

[After an OAuth presentation by Brett Caudill]

There were so many days I did not think I would make it to this point in time. It has not been a breeze in the park by far. I mean as a bit of a hint, the program began with ten apprentices and one facilitator and ended with eight apprentices and a totally different program facilitator. So many days where I questioned myself and if I had the strength to make it through...and what's crazy, I'm actually pushing through.

[Visit to Pantheon, pictured with Adam Barry]

It was of course not all guns and rose thorns lol. I enjoyed this experience tremendously. It forced me to level up. I'm happy to say it gave me a sense of fulfillment in my life that had been missing before. I even gained some happy pounds and am proud to report that I'm back at my average weight of 140 pounds woohoo! I've been able to work my mental muscles in a way that I've never been granted the opportunity to before and for this experience I am eternally grateful.

[Spending the day at Atlassian, receiving help from their Developers on my final project]

[Taking a moment to bask in the glory of all my hard work. Didn't think I would make it this far but I did!]

So for the final months of the program we've been given the chance to work on our own personal projects--whatever they may be--so long as we implement the technologies we've covered while in the program. What did I build??? Wellllll y'all know me--intersecting music and technology it was only right that I came up with a music platform! Introducing version one of an ongoing project I've been working on called Frisco Rap Scene. This platform will give users the ability to listen to songs and watch videos made by local artists based in San Francisco. For the songs page I used the Spotify API in order to embed widgets into the page whenever an artist submits a song in the submissions section. The videos section operates in the same way only here I use Youtube's iframe API. The search feature gives the user the ability to search for content by artist name or song title. Its one of the most difficult parts of building my site and is currently not done but I'm working on it!