One video game that I love to play is Pokemon! So I thought I'd showcase my full stack skills through creating an application based on an aspect of the Pokemon games, the Battle Frontier. I created a single page application where you can look up different Pokemon sets and what Pokemon sets particular trainers have. Information is key when battling in Pokemon since your winning streak can come down to knowing what particular moves or items your opponents Pokemon have. Currently, there isn't a great way to look up this information. Some websites do have the information but you have to constantly click between different pages to get what you're looking for. Also, no website is going to have all the battle facility Pokemon and trainers in one place.

I learned a lot through creating this project,as I created this whole thing myself, from planning out an idea I had for a project to executing my vision. From the backend perspective, I created my own REST API to manage the data through using the Django framework. I got a sense for how Django manages data through models and serializers and how to set up the different end point functionality with views. From the frontend perspective, I utilized React for creating the UI I designed. I learned how React utilizes components for building frontends as well as how the different hooks work, such as to manage the state of the application. Lastly, I gained skills for deploying all pieces of this project together. I went with creating a build for the React frontend so I didn't need two different servers but I had to manage Cross Origin Resource Sharing in order for my frontend to get the info needed from the backend. I was comfortable with deploying my application on AWS since I already had knowledge of the platform. What was novel to me was configuring a web server for serving my application. I utilized gunicorn and nginx to serve my application as this was a fairly popular way to serve Django applications. This project was a labor of love that allowed me to not only grow my skill set but also showcase what I can do as a software engineer.