
Back again for another week! Had a great weekend of watching the longest scoreless postseason game in MLB history (my butt is still sore from the bleachers!), and playing some hockey on Sunday evening. Didn't really get any coding done after Friday evening, but had a nice restful break!

Let's get into it!

# Monday

Monday was a lot of planning. It started out with me finishing the last of my Front End API wish list from last week for our PIM and going over it with my coworker who's working on the back end for this project. After going over everything and getting his thoughts on it, I dove into getting my architecture review done. We need to change the way we're using RTK Query to fetch data from the back end, so I needed to plan out all those changes.

In the afternoon, I worked on the responsiveness of the site, and got a reusable media query function put together to help make that easier in my Emotion components.

# Tuesday

The day started off with a block of solo work time, in which I had to pull some code I'd written for a Python/Django/Quickbooks integration, so I could send it over to one of our Data Scientists to look at. After that, it was time for Architecture Review with the team. Everything looked good, and there were no changes requested, so it was time to start writing some code!

Pretty quickly I got the minor CSS updates and copy changes implemented, and started in on working in the RTK Query API. First I needed to add a slice, as well as a few routes in total. After that, it was on to working on updating the UI to work with the new API changes.

Finishing out the day, I took some time to tidy up some small tasks, as well as get the weekly required training for the company taken care of. Excited for the second half of a Bruins back-to-back tonight! 3-0 to start the season isn't too shabby when you're down 3 key players!

# Wednesday

Wednesday was a bit all over the place! In the morning I continued to work on our next release, refactoring the RTK Query API. I had some solid time to knock out a bunch, so I wrote everything I could without the updates for the corresponding routes in the back end (waiting on a coworker for those), and then got in a bit of time working on this blog!

# Thursday

As usual, Thursdays are pretty weird timing for me. After a 1:1 with a coworker in the morning, I jumped back into working on the refactor. My coworker had pushed updates to the back end after I finished for the day on Wednesday, so I was able to go in and start testing. Pretty quickly I ran into some bugs, so most of my day was working with my coworker debugging things. A few minor syntax errors later, we were rolling again!

In the afternoon after Therapy, I had to jump into adding an image into a banner for our Shopify store. I got everything all set up, and sent a message for where I could access the image. After that, I called it a day! Friday would be the day to implement everything.

# Friday

IT'S FRIDAY FINALLY!

So this morning was full-steam on getting the refactor done. Finished squashing a few minor bugs with my coworker, and things seem to work! We found a bug that we had to pass off to another coworker, so while he worked on that, I jumped over and deployed my Shopify changes and had those approved! Thank goodness for "simple" tasks actually being simple!

While waiting and doing a bit of work on docs myself for the Front End of the Core PIM Platform, I had a cron scheduled to run that synchs our product catalog to Algolia, so I had to hop over and make sure it worked. 30k records and no errors later, we were good there! So nice when things run as they should!

Finally closing out the day, it was just waiting on the changes for the bug so we could deploy. I got this write-up caught up, and once those bugs were fixed, I had one last small bug to fix of my own. A quick refactor of how I was passing the param to my RTK Query endpoint, and we should be good to go there!

In the evening, I got the rest of the responsive styling done for this very blog! I'm excited to get that done so I can focus more on writing!

Enjoy your weekend!


What I worked on this week!

What I Worked On - Oct 17-21


Welcome to the close of the week of October 10-14! At work right now we're in the middle of changing how our Sprints are run and the organization for that, so this was more of an open week for me than normal. Let's get into it!

# Monday

First, some context. Our Data Science team has been wanting to start to put scraping code as well as other initiatives up in APIs, so I built an API using Python, FastAPI, and SQLite for them to do this.

However, this leaves us with having anyone starting these processes to do so through Postman, first calling Auth0 for an access token, and then calling the actual API. As I had a bit of extra time, and I've been really diving into TypeScript lately, I figured this would be a good time for me to build a small front end. Over Thursday and Friday I whipped it all together using TypeScript, Next.js, and Emotion styled components, then protected the app using Auth0, set up the Cypress environment (my first time doing so with TypeScript), and started with a couple layout/render tests.

When I came in Monday morning, I jumped back into writing Cypress tests. Using Cypress has always been easier for me than other testing frameworks, but the addition of TypeScript was a nice surprise with the auto completion it provided on my custom commands! I spent the first half of the day getting things set up there and making sure both my layout and user flow tests were passing.

In the afternoon, I started to get CircleCI set up in the Next.js repo. Previously, I'd only partially set up CircleCI (for this blog), but fell just a step shy of getting everything fully set up, so it was nice to get some time to work on it during work hours! I spent the last of the afternoon trying to get my config set up, as my CI jobs were just failing due to config errors. I finally got things to run, but ran into issues with my ENV's to close out the day, so I decided to give it a break and come back to it Tuesday.

# Tuesday

Tuesday I woke up determinded to get CI figured out. In the first half of the day, I spent the entire time getting things going there. I figured out that my app wasn't finding any of its environment variables, so I went in and added those all in, and surprise, surprise, all my tests were passing!

After getting everything to pass, I found that my CI workflows were running on every single push, so I went in and figured out how to get it configured so it would only run on PR's. I got that set up, and then submitted all my CircleCI testing changes in a PR in the repo, and everything ran just as it should!

After getting it set up there, I've now got the basic pattern down, and I'm excited to go through and add it to all my personal repo's, and then customize even further!

In the afternoon, we had a meeting about how we're adjusting sprint planning, and then I got some work done on this very blog (while definitely not watching the Mariners ALDS game in the background!).

# Wednesday

Wednesday was a two-part day. The first half of the day was spent on deploying to production, followed by your typical deployment problems. As a team we spent the first half of the day narrowing down the problem to the server, and then again to the database connection. After verifying all was good on the Front End (my portion of the project), I spent the second half of the day debugging an API that I've been working on for Data Science. Fixed a couple small references, and everything was good to go! Tested it in the afternoon with the Front End I'd built in TypeScript for it, and everything ran through good! So now I'm just waiting on DS to make their changes to their logic, and then we deploy!

# Thursday

Thursdays are always weird days for me, as I'm required to be in office in the morning, but I have therapy in the afternoons, so I wind up going into the office for a few hours and then commuting back home. For the first block of my day, I had a weekly 1:1 with a coworker, and then started planning for some changes we're going to make to our Core Platform PIM. We need to change the way we're pulling data from the API, so I'm going through and making a list of "this is how the API would look if it were only what I want for the Front End" so we can compare with where we're at. I think we're pretty close, and the small changes we make potentially could give us some dramatic performance gains!

In my afternoon block, I got pulled into trying to implement something in our Shopify store. My coworker hadn't worked in the store in a while, so he asked if we could pair program to take care of it. What seemed like a small change turned out to take us 2 hours, all the while feeling like we ALMOST had it. Turned out we didn't, so at the end of the workday we turned it over to our PM so he could resource it into our next sprint.

# Friday

Friday was spent working more on my ideal API document, until we had our weekly company-wide meeting in the late morning. After this I finished up the day a little early so I could go spend time with the family.

In the evening when I had some alone time, I worked on a fastAPI generator package that I'm putting together in Python.

Pretty good week overall! A bit all over the place, but this is life at a startup!


WIWO - Oct 10-14


# Hello! I'm Jacob!

I'm a Software Engineer working primarily with JavaScript, TypeScript, and Python. I've got experience across the stack, but love to work on the Front End. I spent over 10 years as a Bartender (half of that time in music venues!) before graduating from [Springboard's Software Engineering Bootcamp](http://springboard.com) in late 2021, and have been working for an early-stage startup since! I'm an avid reseracher when it comes to new tech that I'm learning, or just solving problems in general, and figured I should share that with the world! (Hello, void!)

I plan on writing about things mostly Front End Development related, but could stray into some broader topics as well. I primarily work with React, Next.js, Redux, Express, and MongoDB in JavaScript and TypeScript, and then FastAPI, Django, Django RESTFramework, SQLAlchemy, SQLite, and PostgreSQL with Python.

I took a pretty roundabout entry into web development. In the early days, I'd started in college working on a Mechanical Engineering degree before taking a break from college and entering the service industry. I worked basically every position you could in a restaurant, followed by in bars, and winding up bartending full time. I eventually went back to college, this time pursuing a Physics degree. Partway through this, I moved out of the state I grew up in, and started bartending in music venues. When the pandemic hit, I was one of the many who took "if you don't like it, then get a better job" literally, and went to Springboard's Bootcamp. After finishing there I got hired by the company I currently work for now!

I love the opportunity we have as engineers to learn and grow each day, and can't wait to see where it takes me! I also look forward to sharing bits of that journey here!

Thanks for reading!


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Web Development Blog

Recently Published

What I Worked On - Oct 17-21

What I worked on this week!

WIWO - Oct 10-14

What I worked on this week!

A Little Intro

Who am I? Why am I here? What are we doing?

import/.css-1oezf4s{font-size:inherit;font-style:normal;}from

Web Development Blog

Recently Published

What I Worked On - Oct 17-21

What I worked on this week!

WIWO - Oct 10-14

What I worked on this week!

A Little Intro

Who am I? Why am I here? What are we doing?

import/from