General Question —
By: Sejan Miah
Tags: iOS

What have I done to expose myself to programming?

In order to answer what I have done to expose myself to programming, I think it’s important to clarify my perception of programming. I view programming and Swift more specifically as a living language(s). In order to become fluent or a better programmer I try to engage in numerous activities every single day to expose myself. Thus, I expose myself to programming by constantly coding, attending Meetups and familiarizing myself with current events related to iOS Development.

Just a few months ago, I graduated from The Flatiron School’s iOS Development Program in June. This was an environment where I came in and coded from 9AM-8PM everyday working on labs, homework assignments, and a final group project. My labs and homework assignments consisted of a plethora of topics, not limited to the MVC architectural pattern, Google’s Firebase, Core Data, third-party frameworks, git etc. My final project at Flatiron was a group project, where we built an app called Culinarian. The inspiration behind the app stemmed from the fact that at the time I was trying to improve my health and wanted to start eating better. In my journey learning programming, I try to identify problems or things lacking in my life and build apps based upon improving these issues. Thus, when my group and I built we used the MVC architecture to structure our app, used a cloud base database to fetch users’ data and we called the Spoonacular API to generate meals.

I loved the collaborative atmosphere because I learned about different people’s coding style and the importance of communicating before committing. Code cohesiveness and comprehensiveness are two of the many things I have taken away from this experience. I realized the importance of being conscientious of your partners’ code and ensuring that you build upon each other’s code in a way that conveys a thoughtful and clean style. Git commands and comments became my friend. A better understanding of Github helped me grasp the importance of building features in a way that attempts to have the least possible merge conflicts. Clear and well-thought out comments helped prevent miscommunication so your partners could pick up from exactly where you left off.

Even after graduating from Flatiron, I continued coding actively and my friend and I built an app, Weeklyst, to help us better organize what we wanted to accomplish throughout the week. I sought to build Weeklyst after attending a meetup where the company, Rent the Runway, informed me that their app is built using the MVVM architecture. At this time, this was the first app I built using MVVM and I incorporated Core Data into the app as well so users would have their information saved. What I loved about Weeklyst was that the building process was very organic. I was interested in MVVM and organizing my day-to-day and I finally had the ability to combine the two and build something that would mitigate my life. Additionally, attending Meetups, has been a positive experience for me because it reminds me that coding is a living thing. It’s amazing to see a developer’s personality come out during a presentation and then have the opportunity to directly ask them about what they have been working on. When I am not actively coding I try to meet with other engineers to expose myself to their different ideas and styles. Indeed, I have found the iOS Community to be very supportive and helpful in my coding journey.