For my first project of the course, I decided to build a Gen 1 Pokedex CLI application. It would list all the Pokemon by their name and number, and upon asking to learn about a specific Pokemon, it would give you that Pokemon’s more in-depth attributes (such as its species, types, what it evolves from/to, etc). I thought this would be a good project to do because it just made sense to me to do it for this project that was meant to be OO, since a Pokedex is already a pretty OO concept.
My first step was to map out what exactly I actually wanted my application to do. I had a general idea of the functions a Pokedex should carry out for the user, but once I started writing down how I wanted those functions to be carried out and presented, it got me thinking about some methods I would create to achieve my goals for this project. Once I got my gem set up with the help of Avi’s video, I started creating the methods I would need to make my gem how I wanted it. I noticed that my workflow was pretty nice because writing one method would make me think of another method I would need until I eventually had a pretty fleshed out program. But then I got stuck. For days. To be honest, I was really bad at scraping and I was dreading the whole scraping aspect of this project so I kinda just froze up. I felt super alone and I felt like I was the only one that was behind and struggling (which obviously wasn’t true, but you tend to get in your own head about these things). Luckily, my weekly pod partner messaged me to see how I was doing on my project. We got on a call, which then turned into a call of four people, all with a common goal. We helped each other with our problems and we talked about not only our triumphs, but our struggles individually and as a group. I’m really grateful for that experience because it made me feel like I had people I could turn to when I needed help. They helped me with my scraping issue just enough so that I could start doing the rest on my own. By the end of the project, I was so much better at it! They really got me out of that “stuck” phase and I could finally keep building my project. They also pointed me in the right direction to take the rest of my project, so my final stages were pretty straight forward. I also got help from Micah who really laid out what I needed to do to make my project more solid and OO. I felt like I had a really good sense of what to do for the rest of my project so I could just breeze through the rest of it. I actually started having fun! When I thought I was done scraping attributes for my Pokemon, I decided to do some more just because I had a lot of fun doing it! When I was finished with my project, I was surprised at how proud of it I was. I worked really hard on it and I think it shows.
I learned a lot during this project. I also struggled a lot, though. I thought that I wasn’t smart enough for programming and that I don’t belong here, but pushing through those feelings made me so much stronger as a person and better as a programmer. By the end of it, I felt like I had such a deeper understanding of everything we’ve learned so far. I’m grateful for challenges like this because they really put your knowledge to the test. This project taught me that sometimes you can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel, but if you keep going anyway, you’ll eventually reach the end.