This is the world's first ever dedicated tech interview flash card app. It gives users a quick and fun way to access many example questions that have been gathered from tech interview websites. The extremely simple UI gives it instant appeal, the colour scheme is deliberately reminiscent of Codewars with its bright greens, yellows and reds, so users will instantly feel familiarity and joy from using the site.
This was the first time I created something using React components. I have to say I did not like React in the beginning because it seemed like a long way around doing things I was able to do using Vanilla javascript, but once I understood the complexity that such a simple app can develop, I realised the benefit of using React to separate concerns.
The api fetch request was relatively straightforward as I had done a couple of other projects calling APIs before. This was, however, the first time that I had used React useEffect to fetch API data on page load and then used usestate to store the data for use on the page. The combination of useEffect and useState hooks is a very powerful tool that I want to deploy to create a few more projects once the bootcamp is over.
Finally, I really enjoyed working with my teammates to create a unique experience through CSS to make a UI that was so simple and attractive that we have enjoyed using it even after the project was complete.
I particularly enjoyed learning about React because for the first time I was truly being challenged to learn something that I found difficult to grasp and I was proud of the way I managed to keep going until I fully understood the hooks in use. I enjoyed the journey from dread and fear to competence and enjoyment where people were asking me for help. And there's no better feeling than having people ask me for help!
This project definitely showed that I lacked a complete understanding of JSON and using Postman to full effect to send fetch requests to all RESTful API CRUD routes. I did not get around to adding functionality for adding custom questions and answers because we spent so long struggling with getting post requests to work - I will definitely be putting myself forward for the back-end role on the next project to improve my learning in this area.
NB. If the site has not been accessed for a while you have to give the API quite a while to fetch the data when the page loads. Clicking the buttons for the first 10 seconds or so always results in console errors until the API fetch repsonse has been received. We never got round to fixing this bug but I will come back to it when I get some spare time - perhaps by reducing the number of questions and answers fetched on page load, or having a large selection of questions hard-coded in the app for people to study until the fetch response has been received.
I would have liked to have a larger database of questions and answers but the time constraints restricted us significantly. It takes a lot longer than expected to find good interview question resources and then to choose questions with answers that were short enough to fit on a flash card - demonstrating the value of our site even more.
I hope you enjoy using the site!