My CLI project.

For my first project in the Flatiron software-engineering bootcamp, I had to build a CLI application with access to data from a webpage (either through an API or from scraping). Having played around with APIs in the past, I felt more comfortable working with an API rather than trying to use scraping, which can be a burdensome task.

My education coach stressed in approaching this project to “start with the requirements”, and not get caught in the trap of trying to build something too complicated only to find out in a few days that you need to scrap the entire project and start all over. With that said, I began my project by first finding a good API to work with and build my application to the API, rather than having a project plan that forces me into finding a very specific API in order for my project to work as planned.

I found an API from the NHL that I found both personally interesting as well as relatively easy to work with for the purposes of this project. The API I chose provides information on all of the trophies that the NHL awards. This appealed to me personally because I am both a hockey fan and I also find the unique names of the NHL’s awards to be an interesting subject of inquiry. Whereas other sports have very straightforward award names like “rookie of the year” or just MVP, the NHL’s awards have unique names like the Conn Smythe Trophy or Hart Memorial Trophy. If you didn’t already know what the trophy is for, you would have no idea. That is where my app is handy!

The app is relatively simple in that it makes one call to get data from API upon startup and then uses object oriented programming to iterate though the objects instantiated from the API response. The application returns a list of the trophies to the user, and the user can then select a trophy by its index number to find out more information about that trophy. I was actually pretty intimidated heading into my first project in the bootcamp and it has been nice to have gotten through it without any major hang ups.

Being intimidated at first, I made sure to allocate plenty of time throughout the week to work on the project. Having gotten through it ahead of schedule allowed me extra time to help other students in my cohort who were having trouble with their projects. It is nice to provide that help to my piers because at first in this course I felt I was the one who needed help, so it is nice to give that back. Another benefit of providing help has been getting the perspective of seeing how others write their code. It has also helped me better articulate my knowledge of coding in order to effectively communicate with them.

In all, what originally intimidated me and certainly caused some stress actually turned out to be quite successful and rewarding. I was able to further my knowledge by building a CLI application in Ruby that uses API data, thus boosting my confidence in my abilities as a software engineer. I was also able to help others with their project as well, which is beneficial to all parties involved.