Week 6 – Developer Journal 2024

Workshops

In this week’s workshops we began by creating a random dog generator website to introduce us to APIs. This allowed us to see how we can use online databases in our work instead of adding it all ourselves. I enjoyed implementing this task as it’s shown me ways I can use databases in the future. In the next workshop we worked with APIs again to create a counter that we could all update. This is what introduced us to an application called “Postman”. Postman is an API platform that is used to build APIs. We used it see the URLs we needed for both websites.

In the technical workshop I was reintroduced to the idea of Objects and Classes. This is a concept I’m very familiar with as I used to code in C# and that uses object oriented programming. Despite already knowing these ideas, I felt that the way they were introduced was a lot clearer than the way I was. This helped further my understanding and redevelop ideas I already had on the topic.

Lecture

In the lecture this week we had a guest lecturer called Paul Weston who works for Lab Media. Lab Media is a company based around Norwich that works with children to give them an education when they can’t or won’t go to school. I found this lecture incredibly interesting and gave an insight into the type of job I might want to pursue in my future. We were introduced to projects from students as well as some of his personal work. I really enjoyed seeing what students could produce with just a little help from adults and following their own hobbies.

One of the practical things we were introduced to is making sound with us and a circuit. We held hands in a circle apart from the people near the laptop who held wires and me and someone else. The person next to me then touched the end of my nose to complete the circuit and produce a sound from the laptop. We also got to play with a theremin and were taught about Leon Theremin who made it.

Overall, I really enjoyed this lecture as it showed me a career path I had yet to consider. Although I’m still unclear as to what I want to do in my future, this is a new idea I can consider when moving forward.