Student Show & Tell with CrosswordBuilder and Planty, a plant watering reminder app

Hi and welcome to The Treehouse Show. 0:00 The Treehouse Show is our weekly conversation with the Treehouse community. 0:02 [SOUND] A few episodes ago, we asked you, the Treehouse students, 0:04 to submit projects that you've been working on. 0:11 We got a ton, and they are awesome. 0:15 Here are two. 0:18 The first project that we got is awesome. 0:19 It's a crossword puzzle builder from Christopher Kellett in Valencia, Spain. 0:21 Here, let's let Chris tell you about it. 0:26 >> Hello, my name is Chris. 0:27 I'm from Valencia in Spain, and I've been a Treehouse student for about 18 months. 0:28 My project is a JavaScript based crossword builder. 0:34 The idea is simple, you write the words and 0:38 the clues into a self validating grid and make a crossword. 0:41 >> Christopher, this is awesome. 0:46 First of all, I love here, he's showing us that it's a work in progress. 0:47 And the code is on GitHub, how awesome is that? 0:51 So you can come take a look at it. 0:53 So this is at crosswordbuild.com awesome URL, and here he's got his email in 0:54 here about collaborating, he's looking for collaborators. 0:59 But first, let's walk around this a little bit. 1:03 So, what I wanna do, I wanna build a crossword, so I'm gonna put a word in here 1:05 that I might want, no, that's nice, look at that react that way. 1:09 So, I'm gonna go a-p- p- l,-e, and 1:12 then I'm gonna add the word, and add a clue for apple at 1 across. 1:16 Let's see, it's a crunchy fruit. 1:22 Awesome, and then I can choose a word from here. 1:26 So I can say p-a-n-d, look at this, I'm building a crossword, this is so neat. 1:28 So, for it looks like there might be a little bug in there still looking for 1:34 anda at 2 down. 1:40 So, let's see, this is a cute animal. 1:41 So yeah, this is awesome. 1:46 And then, you can delete them if you didn't like that. 1:49 So I wanna make sure that doesn't say anda, so I'm gonna click this delete. 1:54 Okay, coming to version 1.3, that's awesome. 1:58 So he's got this up here before it's ready to go. 2:00 The idea for the future is that I will connect to an API, and 2:03 those words will be suggested, and hopefully, 2:06 also the clues will be suggested based on the words that you input. 2:09 Finally, once you've made your crossword, it generates a URL, and 2:14 you get a sort of unique crossword which has the answers hard coded into it. 2:17 >> Chris, that's so cool, this is such a cool app. 2:23 I love that this is out there, and you don't have those features yet, but 2:25 you still put it out, and 2:28 you're soliciting feedback and even asking for contributions. 2:29 Super cool, man. 2:32 We asked Chris what some of the biggest challenges were, so 2:34 here's what he had to say. 2:37 >> The biggest challenge that I've faced, 2:38 I think, is kind of managing the code when it grew. 2:40 Right now, it's about 1,000 lines of code, and I find it really difficult to debug 2:43 and generally find my way around my own program. 2:47 I have lots of dependencies and they create lots of problems for me. 2:50 >> 1,000 lines of code? 2:53 Wow, let's take a look at that. 2:54 So here in Chris' GitHub repo, in the js directory, 2:56 there's a file called app.js and he is not kidding, it is 1,200 lines of code. 3:01 So, let's take a look, yeah this is wow. 3:08 I can see already, I can tell there's a bunch of stuff going on and 3:10 this would be kind of hard to manage. 3:13 This is awesome that you got this working though, I want to make that clear. 3:15 We asked Chris, what advice he might have for 3:18 somebody writing a project similar to this? 3:21 >> The biggest, or sort of the best advice 3:23 that I could give to other students would be to learn some kind of modular pattern. 3:27 I found that really helped me once I started to write code that was modular. 3:32 To write more organized code that was easier to read, and 3:35 then easier to the book. 3:39 That's all, thanks very much. 3:40 >> Chris, I definitely agree with that. 3:42 I think that making this code more module will also help you find things more. 3:44 I think you should probably try to break this up into files. 3:48 When you are working with something like this, 3:51 where there's all these different permutations, I think one thing that 3:53 would really help you feel like you could more forward is a set of tests. 3:56 So there's a unit testing course, a JavaScript unit testing course 3:59 here on Treehouse, which I think would really help you get this up and running. 4:03 Thank you so much for sharing your project with us, Chris. 4:07 It is so super cool, 4:09 I can't wait to see where it heads, it's already off into a great way. 4:10 We sent you some schwag. 4:14 Thanks again for sharing it and for inspiring other students. 4:15 Our next student is Steven Sullivan from California. 4:19 He has an Android app called Planty. 4:22 Let's let Steven tell us about his project. 4:26 >> My name is Steven Sullivan. 4:28 I've been a Treehouse Student for about six months, and 4:29 the project I built was a small hybrid utility application to send 4:32 my girlfriend notifications to remind her to water her plants. 4:36 >> Okay, Steven, so let's use this app. 4:40 I'm gonna open this up. 4:43 Here we go, nice logo there. 4:46 All right, so I'm gonna enter my email address. 4:49 @teamtreehouse All right, 4:56 and I'm gonna say Create Account. 5:04 I'm gonna try that again. 5:08 @teamtreehouse.com and then I am going to put in my password, 5:15 I am gonna type planty don't anybody jump on my account. 5:22 All right, so now I get to add a plant it looks like. 5:29 Let's see, add a plant. 5:34 How about this one over here? 5:35 This is a great little plant here. 5:37 All right, so new plant, plant name? 5:38 Never named this plant before. 5:41 I'm going to call it Steven. 5:44 Remind me at, let's see, 5:48 I wanna water this everyday at 2:59. 5:53 On all of these days, this is nice. 5:59 Cool, and it says take a picture. 6:02 Awesome, I want Planty to have access to my media, that's a great little photo. 6:05 Beautiful photo there of Steven the plant. 6:13 I can crop it too, this is awesome. 6:17 Look at that, it's gorgeous. 6:20 And then I'm gonna choose Add. 6:26 And it says Notification set. 6:29 Cuz it's gonna notify me at 2:59, and I can backup my folders there, awesome. 6:31 Steven the plant, it's ready to water. 6:37 Steven, this is super cool man! 6:40 We asked Steven what some of the challenges were. 6:43 Here's what he said. 6:45 >> The biggest challenges I faced when building this app was 6:45 probably using libraries and writing code in general that I've never done before. 6:49 It hasn't been geared towards anything I learned or any old projects. 6:54 I just had to pick it up as I went. 6:56 >> That's great, Steven. 6:59 I know that it can be intimidating to work with new libraries, and 7:00 that's something that everybody suffers from. 7:05 There's a new library you don't know, you just gotta dive into it. 7:06 A couple shows back, 7:09 we had Andrew Chalkley on the show, and he gave very similar advice. 7:10 He said, if you want to really get into a technology, you have to dive in. 7:14 And you have to immerse yourself, so 7:18 that you understand what the mental mapping of that is. 7:19 So we asked Steven what his advice is. 7:22 >> And my advice to anyone else who'd like to build a small mobile application 7:25 is read the documentation of the libraries and 7:30 languages you're working with, and just don't give up! 7:33 >> That's right, Steven. 7:37 It is so important to read the docs and everybody does. 7:38 Everybody reads the documentation. 7:42 We've had a Treehouse show on that. 7:43 I've linked to it in the teacher's notes. 7:44 One thing, one piece of advice that I could give you, Steven, 7:47 was when I searched for for your app, Planty, I found a couple of Plantys. 7:49 There was a couple of apps named Planty. 7:54 So maybe we need to come up with a name that's outside of that. 7:57 So it's kinda hard to think out there, so I came up with one for you. 8:00 How about Good and Planty? 8:03 No, probably not. 8:06 How about Steve's Plants? 8:07 Guess I'm not good at this either. 8:11 Well, thank you for being on the show, Steven. 8:13 This is an amazing app, and you're an amazing inspiration to other students. 8:15 Thanks again, we sent you some schwag. 8:20 [SOUND] Thanks for watching The Treehouse Show. 8:21 We hope that you were inspired. 8:27 And we hope that you will help inspire other people. 8:29 Please, share your project with us. 8:32 The way to do that is in the teacher's notes below. 8:34 See you next time. 8:37