I just completed my Rails project and… boy oh boy, was it a roller coaster!
As I’ve mentioned in previous blog posts, I made a promise to myself that I’d create only meaningful and realistic projects, and I can confidently say that this project accomplishes that goal. During undergrad, I often faced difficulty when deciding which courses to take as there were few resources that provided recommendations. So, I decided to create a RateMyCourses web application that piggybacks off of ratemyprofessors.com. Rather than rating professors, users can rate and review courses offered at UW-Madison. Initially, my idea was to keep the application open to all schools, but I quickly realized how difficult and messy things could get as schools often utilize their own naming conventions. Moreover, I was very familiar with the UW system, so it made sense to narrow my scope and stick to one template for all courses/ratings.
The development process for this project was much more time-consuming than I’d originally expected. I began coding on Tuesday of last week and I just completed the application (on Monday of this week). Although that may not seem like a ton of time, it should be noted that I worked at least 9 hours a day on the app, A.K.A. a lot of time! While I’m extremely proud of the result, I must say… that was stressful! During development, I followed along with Jennifer Hansen’s live project build which was extremely helpful. Unfortunately, I started having issues with Omniauth and my frustration level was quite high. Thankfully I got things working after hours of researching but then, of course, more errors. Overall, I probably spent at least 3 days debugging my program! So, it’s safe to say I’m going to need a professional massage to work out the knots I developed over the last week.
All jokes aside, I believe all the hurdles I overcame during development made my application that much more special to me. I feel very confident about my knowledge in Rails thanks to RateMyCourses and most importantly, I feel even more passionate about web development as I now know I can tackle any obstacle that is thrown my way.
Feel free to check out my repo!