Over the Summer of 2019 I worked on web development as an intern at Cycling 74'. My main project was to build an auto suggest search bar for their documentation website. Me and my advisor decided to develop this component from scratch because it gave me to opportunity to learn several new programming concepts and get more comfortable with React, a javascript library that Cycling 74' uses for all of their web projects.
This project was a huge learning experience for me. Overall, I learned about collaboration, asking for and implementing feedback, and how to break up a larger project into smaller, more manageable pieces. On a side note, this project also made me a lot more comfortable with command line, git, and vim. However, there were also three, key, technical takeaways:
1. This project was built as a React.js component using Next.js, Bulma, and styled components. I became comfortable with using all of these tools and gained a practical understanding of concepts in React such as components, props, and state.
2. I worked with HTTP requests. For this project I used axios, which is a promise based HTTP client. I learned how to deal with asynchronous requests by debouncing and cancelling requests that were no longer needed.
3. I also had to handle the UI of this component and implement styling in a way that would clearly communicate and provide the user with effective feedback.
