My First CLI App

For my portfolio project Flatirons tasked me with creating a CLI app that retrieved data from a website and returned that data back to the user. I really wanted to do something functional for this project so I settled on weather forecasts. After much searching I finally landed on a great API I found on openweathermap.org.

The biggest hurdles I encountered with this were figuring out how to convert Kelvin to Fahrenheit and simplifying my code into something concise and clear. In other words, I did way too much work because, being my first major project, I was worried about making mistakes. I can’t stress enough how much I got in my own way with this project. My biggest advice, take a deep breath and when you start feeling stressed take a break for a bit. I went down way too many rabbit holes with this project, Google can be your best friend but it can also be your worst enemy if you’re not careful.

This project really taught me the importance of clearly and concisely outlining what I want to do before hand and staying on track. In regards to the actual code, using a case statement rather than if statements took my clunky and ugly code block and made it clear and easy to read. Most importantly though I learned to not be intimidated by a blank screen. The coding community is wonderful and full of people excited to help and mentor if you’re just willing to ask for it. When I finished I realized that this project was not that conceptually difficult, I just made it that way :)