FNB Codefest 2019

The event was at the FNB Conference Center in Sandton, It is a very nice place, well-organized event and well set up. We were invited by Mr. Jason Suite to attend the FNB Codefest.

We got to be surrounded by software developers who have more experience, though it seemed like “we worked for FNB” and that felt good. Most of all they were familiar with OCEP and we were not.

Our initial goal was to make the web application user-friendly since well they had to move from icon to icon to access other stuff, By making it user-friendly we decided to go for Facebook vision. When you click the X-Hub icon on the FNB application you will land on a page where you find all the articles, videos and photos shared on the platform and also as a user will be able to share, like, comment, upload and tag people at your department and we had a peer to peer chat.

We had to build it using React, Node.js, and Postgres because we do not know OCEP. React was used for a front end, Node.js was used for back end purposes and for Postgres was used as a database for storing data.

Our first day of the Codefest was planning and we got to engage with professional agile methodology coaches. It was so amazing how as a team we got to planning such an amazing x-hub application. We got to draw out the structure and how we want it to come together. The planning turned out great because of our engagement and participation all thanks to our coaches and designing the screens.

We slept a few hours to make sure we push work and in 48 hours we able to produce and present our prototype to the judges. In that 48 hours, we had to keep on presenting to every person coming to our table and we had people who came explaining things which we needed such as designs and went to the OCEP gentlemen to explain to us what is OCEP and its purpose.

We had a room they offered for us to sleep in and take a shower. We had to share but some of us ended up sleeping on the bin bags, some on the couch and some on the floor, we only went to the rooms to take shower. But it was quite an amazing feeling being surrounded by professional and experienced developers. The food was so delicious, the snakes, drinks and energy drinks.