Heads up! To view this whole video, sign in with your Courses Plus account or enroll in your free 7-day trial. Sign In Enroll

Preview

Start a free Courses trial
to watch this video

Sign up for Treehouse

Hardest tasks that you've ever completed?

3:32 with Treehouse

From the Treehouse Facebook group, Taylor Baldwin asks,"Throughout your entire web development career, what was the hardest task you've ever completed that tested your skills and existing knowledge to the fullest?"

[treehouse, Teacher Q&A] 0:00
[Throughout your entire web development career, what was the hardest task you completed] 0:05
[that tested your skills and knowledge to the fullest? ] 0:08
[answer by Jason Seifer] 0:09
Probably making my first web page. 0:11
No, I'm kidding. 0:14
I was going to have a really long, drawn-out story for that, but I don't. 0:16
I would say, as far as skills that have really tested me, 0:19
is anything large scale-- 0:21
working with large-scale websites. 0:24
I've worked on the MSN Music international site. 0:27
That was pretty huge. 0:32
Pretty much anything working at scale 0:34
is a bit of a challenge. 0:37
[answer by Nick Pettit] 0:39
Probably one of the hardest things I've ever done 0:41
is deciding that I didn't want to do freelancing anymore 0:44
and I wanted to get a "real job." 0:48
I think a lot of freelancers 0:53
are also in that mindset. 0:55
They want to just 0:58
stick with that lifestyle and stick with the freedom 1:01
that comes with freelancing. 1:05
But I actually found that, 1:08
just for me personally, 1:10
it was a much better fit 1:12
to just have a day-to-day job 1:14
where I have a steady income 1:17
and I sort of know what to expect, 1:20
whereas with freelancing, it's sort of just all over the place. 1:23
[answer by Mat Helme] 1:26
Off the top of my head, I would have to say 1:28
in 2010, a buddy of mine released an iPhone app, 1:30
which involved bump. 1:35
It was a ringtone app, which you could 1:37
bump phone to phone 1:40
and it would swap ringtones 1:42
from one phone to the other. 1:45
Being such a new technology-- 1:48
the iPhone and designing for it-- 1:51
the development for it was a really hard task. 1:54
[answer by Allison Grayce] 1:57
I think when I last worked at a .net agency, 1:59
a lot of our clients were in the healthcare and finance industry. 2:03
Forcing yourself to--you don't get to be as creative-- 2:07
so kind of forcing yourself to please that type of audience. 2:11
Basically, you work with blue and white and black and gray 2:15
all day long. 2:18
Kind of giving yourself that much limitation and that many restrictions 2:20
kind of tests your abilities as a user interface designer. 2:24
[answer by Jim Hoskins] 2:29
That's really hard to say, because I feel like a lot of projects 2:31
test different parts of my skills a lot. 2:34
In my last job I worked with a lot of data and huge databases and data sets 2:37
and working with filtering data and finding useful information. 2:41
That was a whole different skill set from 2:45
when we did Code Racer and I had to create a crazy, multiplayer game 2:48
in 3 days 2:51
with the help of everybody else 2:54
in a big team, working very quickly. 2:56
That was a whole different set of skills, with communication 2:58
and management and just raw coding and design. 3:01
So I think different projects 3:04
exercise different skill sets, 3:07
but I feel like, as far as rapid development 3:10
and kind of like the craziest project I've ever done, 3:14
Code Racer is pretty much up there 3:17
because it was just a ridiculously short timeline for something that needed to be 3:20
designed, built, and launched in just a few days. 3:23
[treehouse] 3:26

You need to sign up for Treehouse in order to download course files.

Sign up