Lambda Labs Experience
A labs project was a part of my Lambda journey. Lambda is an immersive online boot camp. Upon completion of my last project with Lambda I will be endorsed and begin my job search to enter the work field as a full stack developer. During the final stretch, I was assigned a team and a final project. The project is a web app called Express Groomer. Express Groomer allows users to find pet groomers in their area. It also allows groomers to list their services.
The only concern I had going in was that 4 sprints (or 8 weeks) wasn’t enough time to get this done. I was thinking about all of the other planned curriculum outside of building a project that we are proud of. Lambda Labs is meant to prepare you for your first job as a developer and just like all the weeks leading to it, there is intense fast paced learning.
Our labs team consisted of 3 frontend developers, 2 backend developers and our team project leader. Upon our kickoff date we were given the app requirements from the stakeholder and immediately began the planning stage. Planning included listing user stories and related tasks, creating a wireframe and drawing out a tech decision board.
When breaking down each user story we focused on each task and then subtasks so as to have everything covered while also not being overwhelmed by what seems to be an endless amount of tasks on our trello board. We then assigned each task to the developers who would be working on that feature.
The above trello card shows the task of a photo upload feature for users. The related user story was that a user should be able to upload photos of their pets. The developers assigned the task were myself and a backend developer. As I completed the related tasks I would check them off the checklist.
Getting The Work Done
We began working on the homepage as a team. This included a good amount of pair programming. We agreed on many things so this was pretty easy. We decided on a logo, header image and color theme.
I was responsible for creating a user dashboard and user photo upload feature. Some areas on the homepage looked skewed or simply unattractive when the screen size got smaller so I also began optimizing the responsiveness of our web app. This was quite challenging given that we didn’t use vanilla CSS and used the ant-design styling library. I ended up removing much of the ant-design code and using CSS instead. I used flexbox styling and media queries to make the site much more attractive to mobile users.
The Work Continues
As we wrapped up our Lambda labs experience we can look back on all that we’ve accomplished as a team. With our accomplishments come all of the potential for growth and room for improvement. In just 8 weeks we have built a functional app where users can search for nearby groomers and upload pictures of their pets. This includes implementation of a mapbox API-powered search functionality. Use of the styling library Ant Design was helpful to create a clean and functional user dashboard and photo upload form. There is also a groomer dashboard where groomers can list upcoming appointments and services offered.
I would like to add responsiveness to the user dashboard in the future. It wouldn’t be too difficult although ant design is extremely finicky so it may take some time.
Overall I am very proud of the outcome of Lambda Labs. I have another great project under my belt, some more green squares on GitHub and thoroughly enjoyed working with a great team of people. Ive given and received feedback during this experience and one takeaway that I have is that I can communicate what I plan to implement during meetings. I usually just go and do my work on my assigned tasks. When collaborating with others it’s always good to keep everyone in the loop even on features that are solely my responsibility. I’m thankful for this experience and think that it helps catapult me into having the mindset of a working developer. I have been a Lambda student for over a year and soon I’ll be sitting in my first role as a full stack developer.
