Pseudo Services

The projects I built, products designed, skills learned, and experience doing so

In order to achieve the skills I have now, I have had to practice with multiple platforms in multiple ways. From Server Management to Product Design, the things of which I use today or have made my own are the proof of my skills and talents. And with i.c.stars, I’ve been able to take it from my personal research, development, and production, and apply it in a business world learning business sense.

Entering the World of Coding

Prior to i.c.stars, the most coding I had done was with HTML and CSS. Unless you count YAML, JSON, and Markdown, and even then not greatly. While I toyed with it before, I had to learn what it meant to actually Develop, and as one of the main people help was sought from, I had to learn fast.

One of the main things to click for me was how you actually learn a language. Outside of the super secret military way of just absorb yourself into it (real tactic), the thing I found most important was having a reference to the “pieces of the puzzle” (or syntaxes) and a project to build alongside. Without both, next best was messing with everything and seeing what breaks, as you can see the cause and effect of each syntax that way.

Geek Week Highlights

Geek Week is i.c.stars’ sink or swim crash course on SQL, Excel, and Hot Key usage. Out of these, I was least familiar with SQL, being able to educate people on the other two with the most familiarity while still passing all 15 tests.

Base SQL was easy enough to understand. I want certain columns from a certain table, I want info to be pulled based on certain criteria, etc. The only thing that confused me was the Join mechanic, which once I realized I could pull in logic gates learned from Minecraft’s Redstone, made everything click.

Tools of the Trade

During our time at i.c.stars, we had a number of tools we were excited to learn. While most were from Microsoft, we also received help from Google and Zoom, as well as tools we brought ourselves. On top of all the staples (such as Outlook, Teams, Office 365, Visual Studio Code, etc) here are some of my personal highlights:

My Personal Artificial Intelligence ran through Ollama mixed with Visual Studio Code’s Continue extension
Docker and MySQL‘s Docker Container for running SQL Databases
W3 Schools, FreeCodeCamp, and Pluralsight to learn different coding languages and technical components

Short Circuiting Code

Debugging and Testing code came fairly easy for me. You try something, it breaks, you find the error. That wasn’t the hard part; It was figuring out how to fix it.

Sometimes it was as simple as, “you forgot to close something,” but there was one in particular that got us stumped at CJ&M: SMTP. We were using what was built in as intended, however nothing showed. Perhaps it would help to read the documentation stating it was deprecated…

PhilanthroPoints

CJ&M Are Proud to Present: The eCommerce App for Non-Profits! This was our project for Ms. Benita Webber’s Birthday Connections, and it was a blast to put together. With the help of our mentors and AI, we were able to get what was supposed to be a 9 week project ready in about one month!