This will be my final post for this project. I know—it’s very sad, but the app is coming together nicely, and the class quarter is rapidly closing. I am happy to report that the app can now upload photos to the backend and display the results of analyzing those photos. It’s quite a big step. It’s nearly ready to actually fulfill its primary role—to determine if an item is recyclable! The backend still needs a bit of work to make this happen, but we’re so close I can almost taste the clean air.
When I am stuck on a particularly persnickety problem, I often take a few hours off to put it on the back burner and come back to it with a fresh mind and a full stomach. It sounds like a bad strategy, but it usually works quite well for getting a new perspective and finding a good solution. I am not stuck on any difficult problem at the moment, but I am waiting for the backend to be worked on by my partner. This gives me a choice. Either I sit around and twiddle my thumbs, or I find something useful to work on. I will choose the latter. There is always styling and code cleanup to do.
During this project, there’s been a lot of new Flutter packages I’ve had to use—including a sliding carousel, a QR code generator, and an event broadcaster/listener—that required learning new concepts and strategies. The first thing I do when learning a new technology is to skim the README to get an understanding of what the code is supposed to do. Then, the most important thing for me is to see actually working code examples. I can read all about the API for hours and learn less than simply looking at an example of the code in use for ten minutes. My main tip, if you’re struggling with a new technology, is to look for example code, especially complete working programs that use the code.
Well, that’s it for my last blog on this project. I enjoyed the opportunity to share my progress and thoughts along the way. Wish me and Travis luck as we bring everything together into a working prototype and polish it up. Thanks for reading!!
Good night!
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