Looking back at my capstone course, I never imagined it could’ve gone the way it did. It has definitely been a journey and one that I’ve greatly appreciated!
For some backstory, my group was tasked with building an Opinionated Project Management website, which we decided to call Busy Beaver. We broke it down from the start — using Figma to prototype so we could brainstorm how we wanted it to come together. We decided on our tech stack — a backend RestAPI developed using Java, connected to a PostgreSQL database, with a separate React-based frontend. This was all new to us, and we were excited to jump in!
My biggest success came out of this planning — I was able to jump in immediately to start on the RestAPI and aspects of the PostgreSQL database, and I loved it! I started off generating in-depth API documentation that drove the RestAPI’s development. This made the RestAPI significantly easier to develop and allowed me to focus on a core skill I’d been working on — learning Java and Spring.
I had always been scared of using Java. There were constant mumblings about its verbosity, or how Object-Oriented-Programming can be complex when used to solve every single problem. Yet, I found myself loving it, and really enjoyed diving deep into concepts like dependency injection.
This led me to discover a couple of things about the world, and me. One — is that I shouldn’t always take other people’s word when they mention how difficult a topic might be, sometimes you just need to dive in and experience it yourself. And two — that I really enjoy learning! Since the beginning of this project, I’ve been learning new things every day, and I’ve felt like I’m thriving. I was allowed to work on certain parts of our frontend for our project, and I’ve been loving every second of trying to pick up React and tackle it head-on.
All in all, I hope that this desire to learn stays with me throughout my professional career. It has been a powerful tool, allowing me to develop new skills that I can apply elsewhere. I really appreciate that this course has allowed me this opportunity to discover this!
