Take a peek at that gif above. Looks like a simple card matching game, right? Well, it was not simple to code. It took a week's worth of work and one all-nighter to complete. Well, complete for the purposes of the hackathon, there are features I would love to add in the future. I have long heard that a hackathon is a great way to gain development skills and after this experience, I whole-heartedly agree. This blog post is just a little peek into my process for anyone who might be curious.
The hackathon I participated in was a hiring hackathon put on by Mintbean. This hackathon was a little different from other hackathons I had seen, in that it was originally scoped for solo developers. Also, it focused on showcasing your skills as an entry-level developer. I am currently looking for my first Developer position and this seemed like the perfect event to test out my current skills and dip my toes into hackathon waters.
The week before the hackathon I went through a couple of tutorials and started getting ideas of what kind of website I might build. The day came and we were tasked with building a game utilizing an ordinary deck of playing cards. I was so excited! I had previously built a JavaScript game during my coding boot camp. Our instructor had decided that the class needed more practice with JavaScript and so he told us to take a week to build a game using whatever engine we saw fit. When the week ended my game was the only functional game in the class that met all of the requirements! If you're curious you can play the game here..
I then spent a couple of days looking at different card games, development resources, and planning how the code logic might work. I eventually settled on a game called concentration. You can see the official rules here.. I also decided to use Phaser.io as my game framework. I felt pressured to dive right in, but I slowed myself down and explored Phaser tutorials and examples to get a general idea of how it worked and what was possible. I then planned how I wanted the game to look and work.
The rest of the week was a bit of a blur. I added things bit by bit while logging my data and deciphering error after error. My original goal was to do a full stack project but time was running low so I decided to focus on the front end (that was not an easy decision). It ended up being a smart decision considering that I was up until 6 am on the day it was due. After the game was finished I focused on the other requirements. I decided to use Bootstrap to style my landing page. I decided to deploy the project on Netlify. I found a beautiful theme that fit my project. I also wrote my first README. Those were components I had not focused on before with my other projects. I can definitely see how they may help in the job search and I am glad that I got to experience making them. I also got to write my first blog post! Those surprise benefits combined with the practice in planning and writing code made the effort totally worth it.
Thanks for reading this far! I'd love to meet more folks in the developer community so feel free to find me on Twitter, Linkedin and GitHub. You can see my deployed project here and the source code here! I would love feedback! The Mintbean community is very supportive to all developers so I recommend joining the community even if you are not ready for a hackathon. Also, yes I am already signed up for the next Mintbean Hackathon. If you're interested you can sign up here. If you are looking for a teammate that loves working with JavaScript let me know!