Conclusion
Overall I had a lot of issues and I made a lot of major stupid mistakes in this project. I couldn’t get started due to issues with VS Code and My OS according to MS forums. I was told to upgrade my OS build to fix some issues and was told to downgrade to fix others. I ended up stuck on week 2 and everyone else was on week 5. I got partially fixed and when I started I didn’t actually know where or how to start. Jetstream meant something else to me than what it actually means in Laravel so that was really disappointing. I ended up starting very late and I just struggled instead of asking for help. It took me far too long to work out how to start a project then I found out that I just install an extension and away I go.
When I got started I found Laravel to be extremely easy, the blade.php files took a little bit to get my head around but it is basically just scaffolding in .NET Core. The concept and the crud is exactly the same as .NET. They fact it also uses MVC is extremely convenient. The file structure is a little different and the terminology for things is a little different but I found it to be very similar to .NET. I probably enjoyed this project because it wasn’t something completely alien and that I have a great of pre-existing knowledge to work from.
I am a bit disappointed that I didn’t realise that Backpack extension is purely a back-end dashboard. I didn’t take the meaning of it to be so literal even though it told me so repeatedly. I am quite disheartened that I did not complete a lot of the stuff I would have liked to have added. I wanted to do a full front-end website with posts as the news articles, it really didn’t turn out as well as I would have hoped, however I did get a great deal done in a very short time. I am quite proud of what I was able to accomplish in such a short period of time and if I were to do it again I would definitely ask for help next time no matter how stupid I feel.
Going forward I will probably take another shot at doing this assessment in my own time so I can develop something I will be more proud of and can learn a great deal more from. I have plenty of positives to take away from this project as well as many negatives.
