Weekly wins: a TA's guide to success at Carolina Code School (part two)
Hello everyone!
This is Chelsea Snider, the TA from Carolina Code School, here again to give you another sneak peek into the past few weeks of class.
Where are we now
We are quickly coming up on the final stretch of the course, and our students will soon start putting everything they’ve learned together to create their first full-stack application! Which is exciting! It feels like just yesterday that I was in their shoes, having to develop my first full-stack app.
While learning the basics of development, I have also guided them through mock software development interviews! They are becoming battle-hardened, smarter, and more innovative by the day! So much so that I am excited to see what our students will build and present for everyone during Demo Day at Carolina Code School!
But instead of talking about the end product, let's dive into what the students have been learning over the past few weeks. So far, they have learned HTML and CSS, JavaScript, and Python!
where are we headed
Displaying elements, data, and text on a static website is great, but how do we store, retrieve, and transit that precious data? Suspenseful drumroll, please… we use APIs and SQL databases!
let’s break it down
In the past few weeks, our students have started learning about APIs (Application Programming Interface) and SQL (Structured Query Language). APIs are a standard way to transmit data from the front end to the backend of a web application! Every website that stores or asks users for data in any way generally uses an API. But before utilizing an API call, one must first understand the standard methods of an API call, which are GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, and PATCH!
Building an API is a challenging task, so instead of building one from scratch right off the bat, the students started learning about 3rd party APIs and how to properly use them to request information from the respective API’s database. Adding a 3rd party API is a great way to add or enhance features for any application.
But, before we can run, we must walk and understand the first challenge - how to utilize Github’s 3rd party API to GET and retrieve the instructor, Sean Reid’s GitHub data.
As intimidating and difficult as it was to use the API call to get information properly, the reward for successfully achieving it was so much higher! In fact, one of our students almost knocked over a table in a burst of excitement when he saw that the GitHub API request was successful and that he had gotten Sean’s profile data back! The table was not harmed, but our nerves may never recover from the suddenly loud and shocking outburst of, “FINALLY, I GOT IT!”
Now that we have an API call and can retrieve data, how do we store it?
Welcome to the funny world of SQL.
It’s a place where the code is seemingly written in plain English. Conceptually, it should just be manipulating rows and columns like an Excel Spreadsheet, but it’s more like carefully creating a magic spell that comes undone if you mistake a variable name for singular instead of plural.
“User, Users, USER, and USERS?! What’s the difference between them being singular, plural, and all caps?!” exclaimed one of the students as she was troubleshooting her database, forgetting to add an ‘S’, on the end of mistakenly singular variable, causing data to not transmit to the database. A strong disdain for the English language, her native language, may have been created that day.
Even though learning about API calls, data transmission, data storage, and how accidentally mistaking a variable name to be singular instead of plural may sound frustrating and horrible, I am pleasantly surprised at how Cohort 18 is handling learning new languages, concepts, and the importance of paying attention to your variable names. They are learning and mastering the basics of software development in stride!
PERSONAL NOTES
This has honestly been a fantastic cohort to work with and to help out. Stay tuned for more updates and the newest blogs on the tales of being a Teacher's Assistant. And while you’re at it, stay tuned to get all the latest information on our upcoming Demo Day, where the students will showcase their final projects! And as always, if you’ve made it this far, I want to really thank you for spending the time to read this, and I hope you’ve had a wonderful time :)