Putting The DEV in ‘DevOps’

From the months of mid-July to early-October, I commited to a tech training course through La Fosse Academy (referral links), focused on full stack development. With that said, I can imagine a few readers who knew me for my cloud engineering endeavers are thinking, “Full stack development? How did you end up going down this route?”.

I acknowledge that it’s a different domain to DevOps engineering, which is more focused on orchestration and deployment management. Admittedly, at the time, I was just giving the development route a shot, but in retrospect it was one of the best decisions I could’ve made.

Learning fullstack development in an organised learning environment really put into perspective a lot of what happens in the CI/CD pipeline, which filled in a lot of the gaps for me. I now have a clearer understanding of app development and why CI/CD is paramount. So in short, I guess you could say I was levelling up my ‘Dev’ which improved my DevOps understanding.

With all that being said, I wouldn’t go as far as saying that ALL aspiring DevOps or Cloud Engineers should obtain web development experience – They are still different sets of skills after with only a little overlap after all. But having experienced both sides of the coin, I understand why having some experience building an application (especially using CI/CD tools) can definitely be an advantage when it comes to moving into the DevOps space.

“Gotta Stack ‘Em All”

I want to preface this section by saying that a lot of this will be covered in more depth in a separate blog post, but here is a little snippet for this recap…

From the previous section, it’s no secret that a huge focus of mine lately has been bolstering up my tech stack, with a keen focus on full stack development. I had plenty of ground to cover in a relatively short space of time, so a lot of hard work had to go down to achieve this.

Frontend

When it came to frontend stacks, I learned to use and produce projects with HTML, vanilla JS & CSS. Solidifying these foundations in a organized learning environment was pivotal and empowering because it filled in the many gaps, and helped me make sense of things I’d struggled to understand during my past minor attempt at web development after AWS re/Start.

I honestly struggled more with CSS initially because there are just so many ways to achieve certain effects, and that ‘eye’ for web design doesn’t come natural to me. So it took a lot of practice and feeling for me to feel confident with page styling – definitely humbling experience.

Eventually, the React library was added into the frontend mix, and like many before me, my first week of learning it was challenging to say the least. Especially because of the amount of new theory I was learning whilst trying to put this ‘struggle knowledge’ into practice. Like what is a ‘hook’?, why are there so many? why is Redux so complicated? I had so many questions. But despite my confusion, the value and benefits of React were not lost on me, and I found the SPA movement intriguing, so I made it my mission to work hard and improve.

I’d say 2 weeks into my React journey was when things finally started to click mentally, and at 3.5 weeks was when I started to thrive and explore a lot more. It was THE BEST feeling, and I owe that to the debug assignments and skill checks from La Fosse. As well as my own determination to ask questions and practice as much as possible.

Backend

For the Backend, I started off with learning Node & Express, and writing to JSON for the data component initially. Then MongoDB & PostgreSQL were added shortly after to complete the backend stack. This was all completely new to me, as the only prior experience I had with APIs was a basic understanding of AWS Lambda. So it’s safe to say that I felt completely out of my depth in the beginning.

One thing I struggled with understanding in the early days was fetch requests, and try-catch/promises. It’s a little embarassing looking back at how stumped it had me in those early days, but the moment it clicked for me I’d unlocked a new level of confidence, and backend development became my favourite thing. This was my first big hurdle and was an experience I’d later refer to when struggling for a short time with React, and to a lesser extent, when learning Flask.

Adjusting Post-programme

Coming to the end of the course at La Fosse was admittedly more sweet than bitter. Mainly because I’d gone through the full bootcamp experience before, so I knew what to expect. That experience also meant that I made sure to have no regrets regarding my work ethic. I was so proud of all that my classmates and I had achieved over the 12 weeks, with myself going from barely knowing frontend development to being confident with full stack.

The course was capped off by our long-awaited LAP 4 project – two weeks of intense focus to produce a full stack React and Flask web app of our choosing. The last few days of the project involved back-to-back sleepless nights, so I was exhausted by the end of it, and was looking forward to 3 days of pure rest and recharging. 

I knew I would miss seeing my classmates every LAP. Not to mention our lunchtime boardgame/Nintendo Switch sessions, and our end-of-week socials, but I was confident we would stay in touch.

Having gone through post-bootcamp adjustments before, I wasn’t worried about hitting a slump, as I already had my plan ready to go:

• Rest for the first 3-4 days after graduation
• Start working on one larger scale project
• Complete multiple smaller projects for skill development
• Maintain a daily 9-5 schedule
• Start job hunting with spreadsheet tracking

My biggest challenge in times like this is balancing job applications and interviews, with projects and upskilling. I’m sure many graduates or junior tech applicants can relate to this balancing act, and how draining it can be to constantly change hats for extended periods of time.

The key to not getting burnt out is spacing your interviews well and ensuring to recoup adequately after interviews or intense application rounds. My personal favourite ways to recuperate are to take the rest of the day off (when possible), treating myself to my favourite fruits, or going for a scooter ride to decompress.

Taking breaks has been my key to managing my mental health during job searching, and staving off burnout. I’ve found that implementing the rest days as I go is way more productive than depleting myself and needing a much longer, and potentially detrimental break period later on. It also helps to work on projects that you are passionate about.

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Projects and Upskilling

As mentioned in the previous section, I typically like to have one larger scale project on the go, with some smaller projects on my radar as a palate cleanser and a means of getting practice reps with different skills.

I actually happen to be working on two larger scale applications right now. I know, I’m bending my own rule, but one of them is a collaborative project with a La Fosse Academy classmate and the other is a solo project, so there’s a bit more balance.

BasketNow – Full stack mobile app (solo)

The solo project I’m working on right now is a basketball training app called ‘BasketNow’, which also happens to be a passion project. I’ve wanted to create a basketball-related app since my 3rd year of my undergrad, but didn’t have the skills at the time. I’ve been working on it for 2 months now using React Native.

The premise of the app is to create a space for basketball players to schedule and track their training progress through the use of default and/or custom-made training blocks and drills. For a more indepth look at the app’s features, check out the project Gist.

The first 3 weeks involved planning out the architectural design, UI, navigation, and data schemas. The UI took the longest because there are so many screens to account for, and a lot of research had to be done. Despite it taking so long, I knew it would be better to get it right from the start, than to overhaul later.

Since then, I’ve been coding and knocking off trello cards for 4 weeks now and I’m loving every moment of it!

Wellspace – full stack web app (collab)

The other large-scale project I’m working on is a habitual wellness app called ‘WellSpace’. This was actually my LAP 4 La Fosse project, but me and one of my project teammates wanted to progress it further after the fact, so here we are. We decided to remake it with a Node backend instead of Flask, and revamp the frontend. So it’s almost a complete overhaul, but we’re excited to make it closer to her vision.

The premise of the app is for our users to engage with manageable daily wellness activities. We aim to help our users realise that daily commitments to wellness can be simple but effective, and don’t always need to be a pre-planned or extensive affair.

When users complete a task, their homepage brightens up progressively to reveal their WellSpace, which then resets at the beginning of each day. Completing tasks over time also accumulates in-app currency, which can be redeemed in the shop for assets to personalise their WellSpace and make it their own.

The app also provides users with a wide selection of UK-based mental and physical wellness/support services that can be easily accessed by all visiters of our app.

During the LAP 4 project, I worked almost exclusively on the frontend, with close collaboration with the backend team, as I was in charge of the authentication functionality across the app. However, this time around my role is mainly to work on the backend, with some frontend input here and there.

What I’m most looking forward to is working on the shop side of the app, because that was a big challenge for us on the first go-around of the development process. It would also be great to eventually make this into a mobile app, but my colleague and I agreed that it makes more sense to finish what we’ve started to a high standard first.

Smaller projects

Some smaller projects I’ve worked on since graduating from La Fosse was my portfolio website, a movie ranking mobile app, and a todo mobile app.

The mobile apps were both created using React Native, as a means for me to practice ahead of starting the BasketNow app. I followed a tutorial initially, but in typical Camille fashion, I progressed it further to expand my knowledge and skills.

On the other hand my portfolio website is a full stack web app that uses the MERN tech stack. I could’ve made it frontend only, but I wanted to push myself as well as include some features that typically aren’t on a portfolio site. Such as a secret page that requires a login to gain access to the content. I can’t wait to share it in the new year!