Phase 1 Project: A lesson in MVP

My initial thought process going into the very first project for my coding camp was to use something I was familiar with; the CTA train line system(Chicago Transit Authority), as I assumed it would make Object Orientation easier to wrap my head around.

My plan for the app in the beginning was having a user submit their zip code (which I would use a gem to convert the latitude/longitude of the stations to zip codes and compare to the user inputed data) and then ask what time they would like to depart. I also had a stretch goal of showing the user any lines that had service or delays at the moment.

The CTA gives a ton of data that is changing every second of the day. As I got deeper into the code (multi-12 hour days) I started shredding my ideas. First to go was the concept that the user didn’t know what station they wanted to depart from in the first place. Then I was unsure I would be able to pull in individual station data, as it would require a second API get request. Eventually my backup plan was to just show all the current trains in service on at least 1 line to meet the project’s requirements of allowing the user to get 1 level deep into the data. This would still mean converting the MMDDYYYY HHMMSS time to something more legible.

Ultimately, I decided to scrap the project and lean onto my coding partner to help me along with a new project of searching dog breeds and returning a handful of data points about each breed.

My main lesson in this was, keep things in scope, remember MVP and to lean on my partner and community more as I’m not quite ready to fly the nest on my own as of yet.