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

8:38 with Craig Dennis

In this episode we look at 2 student projects, CrossWordBuild by Chris Kellet, and Planty by Steven Sullivan.

Speaker's Notes
Questions?
Video Transcript
Downloads
Workspaces

Awesome Student Projects

Recommendations

Watch the Unit Testing in JavaScript
Break your JavaScript into multiple files using a bundler like Rollup.js

How to immerse Yourself in New Tech

How to submit

We'd love to feature your projects on the Treehouse Show!

To share your projects with the Treehouse Show and inspire other students.

Send an email to show@teamtreehouse.com

Your name and where you are from
A photo of yourself and your work space
A link to a project that you are working on, or are proud of that we can share
And a short video introducing yourself and the project.

That video should answer these questions:

How long have you been a Treehouse student?
In less than 30 seconds, what is your project all about?
What’s the biggest challenge with this project?
What advice do you have for people trying to build something similar?

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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

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