Coder's Hive

Have no idea where to begin learning about coding? Well, you have come to the right place. Here, at Coder's Hive, we strive to educate people of all backgrounds in the vast field of coding.

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💡 Inspiration

-Everyone starts of in the woods, with no sense of direction. That is exactly what it feels like when all you have been hearing about is Computer Science. But where might you begin? The answer to that never arrives, so you are stranded on your own boat with no paddles to take you anywhere. A helpful, supportive community and all the resources you'll need in one spot ought to be the perfect solution to this.

⚒️ What it does

-Coder's Hive is a desktop application that helps people of all backgrounds -- no matter their race or ethnicity, everyone is accepted with open arms. It provides a vast, friendly community for all learners, and tons of resources to choose from. After a quick and easy login, the user is displayed the homepage with a variety of options to choose from, ranging from scrolling through free resources to select to chatting with other like-minded folk. The public chatrooms are open and running live so if anyone needs help they may ask their peers and collaborate. Our application runs an algorithm that categorizes user's with generated tags (such "Beginner", "Intermediate", "Expert") based on the text messages being sent in the chatrooms.

🧰 How we built it

-This is our team's first time using React to stitch together the front end! Our team members took on the challenge of learning a certain elements such as UI/UX design, front-end, and back-end. We were surprised by how much we had learned in the span of just two days. We had to take the learning aspect into our own hands and worked on different components, so everyone was busy.

-On the first day, two team members took on the task to design an identical mockup using Adobe XD. Through this, they learned the use of various properties and transitions that could be made within the program. Once this was finished, they researched about React and learned different components that they would be utilizing. The mockup design was an excellent reference for everything that needed to be coded on the front-end side.

-While two team members worked on the front-end, the other two team members were tasked with stitching together the back-end. For the front-end, we used Visual Studio Code and React to construct the main application. For the back-end, we used Webrtc and Python to create an authentication feature for our login page. The data for our application would be stored in our excel sheet file. Once it was all coded, we embedded the back-end to our application.

😓 Challenges we ran into

-There were many challenges we ran into throughout the process of creating this application, especially since there were so much to learn in a short amount of time. Some specific challenges we're proud to say we have overcome were:

-Categorizing programming terms. It is very time consuming when there is so many terms and have to simultaneously research some of them because the category they belong to cannot be placed down in stone. Not adding those terms into the programming word list isn't good because people using the app may use them during their conversation.

-Navigation Bar: This was definitely one of the more frustrating challenges we had to overcome, and definitely tested our persistence -- it seemed like such a simple component on the side of mostly every website. Implementing it took several shots. We kept researching various ways to fix the errors that would pop up, but finally something worked. However, not a single team member out of the two front-end developers did this alone-- they had to tough it out together. With two pairs of minds, the challenge was overcome and the next task was awaiting.

🏆 Accomplishments that we're proud of

-Some things that we are really proud of is definitely pushing ourselves out of our comfort zone into areas we had never explored before. This included working with React, google authentication, logins and user input boxes, and even integrating bits of a social platform (such as our chat forum and the public video chat).

-UI/UX design is another thing we take pride in. We made sure the user is able to have the easiest navigation throughout, and even went through the hassle of animated a few components to ensure a simple understanding of our interface. We played with various color pallets, in order to ensure our users would not get bored after a single glance.

-Self learning is another thing we are proud of, as difficult as it could be being a beginner with an overwhelming task such as creating a desktop application. Not only did we teach our selves individually, but we also collaborated with one another and managed to be teachers as well.

📚 What we learned

-As this was our first time with React for the front-end, we had to start off with some of the basics and had the help of their official tutorial which introduced all the necessary knowledge of the various parts. However, this gave us the creative liberty of creating our application which ever way we saw fit: we were able to use APIs with our new knowledge and our previous experience with HTML and CSS. From this, we learned how to implement a working Login page, our Home page, and navigation for our application. The google authentication could not be implemented due to the tight time frame, unfortunately. This was the same case for our dynamic UI for the video and chatrooms, placement algorithm, the friends feature, and the about us page.

💪 What's next for Coder's Hive

-We are planning on implementing the google authentication, our dynamic UI for the video and chatrooms, placement algorithm, the friends feature, and the about us page. This would allow our users to more effectively login and with more ease, and be more compatible with one another in the sense of their expertise level.

-To make our platform a bit more alive and welcoming, we will add a friends feature and aesthetically designed chatrooms and video rooms, where users may interact with one another however they prefer-- face-to-face or at a distance with our texting forum.

-We recognize our users efforts to gather the knowledge they need in order to thrive in this field of Computer science, and have build the most interactive application possible given the time constraints. Most of the resources in our application are free, in respect to those who are financially disadvantaged.

-So are you ready to display those flashy tags and hop, rather buzz, in to our supportive community?

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