2 Tech Residency Projects Built by Coding Temple Graduates

Coding Temple is now offering an 8-week, online tech residency exclusively for Coding Temple bootcamp graduates! James Carlson and Jeff Chebul, recent Coding Temple alumni who wrapped up their tech residency, walk us through their projects, Spork and ScreenSort. They share insights for future tech residents on how to make the most of this unique experience. Learn how the tech residency helped Jeff and James continue to build their skills, experience, and portfolio. 

Jeff, you have a background in web design — what were your career goals when enrolling at Coding Temple?

I originally went to school for web design and video production, but I worked a little more in video production. I then got into the pet care industry, where I built a successful business for the last 15 years! I knew it wasn’t the most stable job and wouldn’t see me into retirement, so I was looking for something to move me forward. I always loved web design, but I needed to refresh my skills. I was looking for the best path forward and the clearest trajectory to retirement, and I discovered I have great ability with programming.

James, you also have a background in web design and game development. Why was Coding Temple the right next step in your career journey?

Game development has always been a big passion of mine, so I got my bachelor's degree in game development and design. I took a winding path through my career where I worked in video production and graphic design, and had a lot of different experiences that weren't always helpful for getting a job in either game development or something adjacent to it. I wanted to build experience as a coder so I worked with some freelance clients but I found that I didn’t have enough coding experience to make an impact on a lot of potential employers. I wanted to gain more experience, build a bigger portfolio, gain more confidence and strength as a coder, and follow best practices to make myself more marketable as a potential employee.

What did Coding Temple’s curriculum cover? What were some of the skills and languages you learned in the bootcamp?

Jeff: We started with the basics of coding (HTML and CSS) and then moved on to a very extensive lesson in Python, where we got into object-oriented programming. We then moved on to different languages, such as JavaScript and TypeScript, and learned frameworks, such as React for the front end and Flask for the back end. Coding Temple has an extensive programming curriculum and we learned everything we needed to know to understand the foundations of programming so that we could build on new frameworks and languages over time once we're out of school. 

Were there a lot of projects assigned during the bootcamp? What kinds of things were you able to build as you made your way through the bootcamp?

James: I did the full-time Software Engineering course through Coding Temple. We had substantial homework assignments every night, as well as projects every weekend. Towards the beginning of the course, projects were more simplified, like command-line interface assignments  where we’d manage contacts or library books to practice what we learned. Towards the end of our time at Coding Temple we moved into more complex projects, like building e-commerce applications with a front end that users can use, which communicates with a backend through API calls. 

One of my favorite projects was during our front end unit when we learned about API calls and how to use React and JavaScript. We had a front end application making API calls to a Pokemon database and another one making calls to a Marvel database — that’s a lot of fun when you're a big nerd like I am!

How did you get into the tech residency after graduating from Coding Temple? 

Jeff: The tech residency is a partnership between Coding Temple and Co.Lab, a product manager bootcamp. I was in the cohort before James and I asked to be involved with it. Moving forward with James' cohort, it became automatic that every student was offered the opportunity to go through it! 

Was this a full-time or part-time tech residency? 

Jeff: It’s part-time. Most people we worked with had full-time jobs, so the program tried to find a way to work with everyone’s schedule, as well as having us work independently. 

What were you hoping to achieve by completing this tech residency?

James: I knew I was going in to gain more experience, like building bigger projects, working in a cross-discipline team, as well as with more tools, potentially languages, and anything that we can carry with us forward and to add to our portfolio and help us in a job search.

How much time were teams given to build your tech residency projects? 

Jeff: The residency was an eight-week program. It was a matter of how much time everyone could put into it, but we had a full eight weeks to come up with the product and see it through to the finish. 

Jeff, you built an application, Spork, with fellow Coding Temple graduate, Chris Fletcher! What are some of Spork’s main features?

Spork is a product we developed for people who have chronic illnesses. The idea behind Spork is based on “Spoon Theory,” which was created by Christine Miserandino. She came up with this analogy while at a diner with a friend who wanted to know about her chronic illness. She grabbed all the nearby spoons and said, “These 12 spoons are my energy limitations for the day. I have to choose every activity I do and decide how many spoons I will spend on each activity. Once I'm out of spoons, I'm done for the day. I'm not able to do anything else.”

Chris and I wanted to create something that would help people with chronic illnesses find a way to understand their energy expenditure and figure out how to limit the effects of their activities to prevent going through a flare-up or anything else that might cause them issues health-wise or potentially lead them to go to the hospital. 

Spork tracks the user’s energy, gives them a bit of insight, and helps them become more effective. Spork is basically an activity tracker where the user can see what activities they’ve done that day (such as going to work or taking a shower), and see how many spoons they have left through the day. We track flare-ups and see what days you have a flare-up versus how many spoons you spent that day. We want to be able to tie Spork into your health trackers on your phone and wearable devices and create insights that we can share with your doctors or with your family. This will help people understand what you're going through, understand your illness, and how your illness impacts you every day. 

Did you use everything you learned at Coding Temple to build Spork?

Jeff: We used everything we learned at Coding Temple, including React on our front end and Flask for our back end. We learned new technologies as well! I’m currently working with my back end developer, Chris, to learn the Django framework for back end because it's a bit more robust than Flask. This will give us a bit more flexibility to scale up and add more features over time. 

James, you built an Android application, ScreenSort with fellow Coding Temple graduate, Jose Garrido II! What does ScreenSort do?

The original vision for ScreenSort allowed users to give ScreenSort access to their phone, and then ScreenSort would go through their screenshots and sort them into different categories, such as memes, shopping, text conversations, recipes, and more. This was a big leap for me and Jose, as we never really worked with AI before and we'd never made an app, so we were taking on a lot of new challenges. What we ended up with was different than what we originally envisioned. The intention of ScreenSort was to help users keep their phones more organized and cleaner. 

What programming languages and tools did your team use to build the ScreenSort app? 

James: Using AI was an ambitious goal since we’d never worked with it before! One of the technologies that we looked at was image classification. What we found was that it's really good for classifying whether a picture is red or blue, but it was more difficult to show an image and ask it to identify or tag it. Ultimately, we weren't able to get any of the AI parts working. We pivoted a lot throughout the project and I wish we had focused our project on what we knew how to do and what we could build with it. 

We started out working in Python, and there's a framework called Kivy that can allow Python applications to run on Android mobile devices. We tried to figure out how to get that built with a tool called BuildDozer, but the Python wasn't going to work, so we switched to Java. ScreenSort was made in Java in Android Studio, which were new technologies for us. In that sense, I'm really proud that we were able to figure out how to build something.

Was the Coding Temple team there to help you out as you came across challenges?

James: We reached out to some of our Coding Temple instructors, and they said it was part of the learning process and a valuable lesson when you are working with something you have never done before. We jumped in headfirst. I can bite off more than I can chew, so I think that's helpful to keep in mind when setting out on a big project and being more realistic with expectations. 

What was it like to build your project with other software engineers? How did your team delegate responsibilities and collaborate?

James: Jose and I were both in the full-time coding bootcamp at Coding Temple. At the end, you can choose whether you want to specialize in back end or front end, and we both specialized in back end. I think that created some ambiguity on how to divide up some of the tasks for our project. We assigned Jose to work on learning Kivy. I focused on learning image classification to see if I could get that working. When nothing worked, I suggested we pivot and try Java and Android Studio. Throughout that process, I became a de facto lead developer because I was driving this idea of what we could and should build. It was a learning process!

Jeff, how did you and Chris divvy up your responsibilities? 

It was a bit easier for us because I am more of a front end specialist and Chris is a back end specialist. There was a clearer division of responsibilities between us and it worked out really well. I had a lot of confidence with the front end, and when Chris had struggles, I was able to step in and give him some guidance. We also did get a lot of help from the team. 

Do you anticipate talking about your tech residency experience during job interviews?

Jeff: I have already spoken about this in some interviews! I’m very happy with what we built. Spork is something that I believe adds value to the world for people who live with chronic illnesses. It's something that I came up with because it hits close to home; my girlfriend lives with a chronic illness. I’m proud of this project and believe it shows my ability to any potential employers. 

At this point in your tech career, was Coding Temple worth it for you? 

James: I'm very happy that I learned new languages and new skills and also made some new relationships through Coding Temple. My honest answer is that I’m not sure yet if it was worth it. There's a very literal cost that I'm still paying off for my attendance in Coding Temple, as well as the time and energy that I spent on late nights studying and doing these projects. Once I find a decent job with a good salary, I think that will make it worth it. But I'm still in that job-hunting phase and it can be hard and discouraging. I'm optimistic that I'll find something. 

Jeff: I do believe it was worth it. I knew my learning style going in that I needed to be held accountable and had timelines I needed to keep up with. If I was trying to learn outside of Coding Temple, I think it would have been a lot more difficult. So in that sense, it was worth it. While the job search does continue, I think that's the difficulty for a lot of people in this field right now. There are a lot more people looking for jobs than are available, but I've been happy with the interviews that I've gotten already. While I didn’t get those jobs, I am still waiting to hear back from a few others. I have been surprised that I’ve done interviews for positions that I wasn’t qualified for. Something about the project that I've created through Coding Temple and the residency seemed to have hit something with the people who were looking at me, and I'm hopeful that I will get there soon. 

Find out more and read Coding Temple reviews on Course Report. This article was produced by the Course Report team in partnership with Coding Temple.