being in tech

6 weeks of summer vacation where 2 of those weeks were spent away from the computer. It’s definitely the longest break I have had for a while.

I wanted to spend some of the break time learning a few new things and I decided to work on a small wishlist app. While I had planned to blog about everything I had learned, I had more fun doing the actual work than writing about it😁(the ones I did write about you can find here)

Some key takeaways that I have

• Co-pilot is a really good tool that can speed up the boring repetitive stuff, but also really helpful when you need explanations or suggestions on how to solve various (specific) problems. A lot of other AI tools are also available to help with the creative parts, though the output still needs refinement but for the purpose of building an MVP, you can go a long way with just the free AI tools available. Personally, I’ve used Bing chat and it was pretty good for what I needed.
• I got some good practice implementing Clean architecture, and the benefit really came through when later in the project, I got a suggestion to, instead of building the API using a typical api project, try out using function apps. It was basically a matter of setting up the controllers and everything just worked.
• It was a good exercise in learning about function apps and Azure table storage as an alternative to having a typical database as storage.
• I also got to try out github actions as opposed to azure devops which is what i have worked with so far. I wouldn’t say I have enough experience to put it in my CV but at least I SORT OF know how it works and what to do to make simple changes.

Now that it’s back to work, I probably won’t get as much time as I used to, but I do hope to put some work into it, hopefully in the UI front 🤣 Maybe that’s a job for fiver.

You can find the repo at https://github.com/jocelynenglund/itsybitselist/

and try the app out at https://wishlist.itsybit.se/