Ace

Studying for technical interviews can be super intimidating. Where do you start? Ace is an app that allows users to study for technical interviews by spacing out questions throughout the day.

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Inspiration

As we approach the fall semester, many college students are eager to start preparing for the recuiting season in order to find summer internship opportunities. Technical interviews can be intimidating for students, therefore it is easy to get overwhelmed by the amount of material they need to study.

What it does

The Ace app is for helping students "ace" their next technical interview by providing a bank of study questions related to data structures and algorithms. Students may choose how often they are prompted to answer a short question. This allows students to evenly space out their interview study preparations and avoid craming the night before the interview. This is also useful for students who simply want to get ahead or retain their knowledge of fundamental computer science concepts.

How I built it

I started off by using Figma to create a design and layout. I built the app using Swift with xCode. I researched common interview questions and popular data structures and algorithm questions that would be helpful when studying for technical interviews in order to create the question bank.

Challenges I ran into

Since this is my first time with iOS development, I didn't have experience using Swift and xCode, so there was a big learning curve in the beginning of the hackathon. I took a lot of time learning fundamentals before I could begin working on Ace. I relied a lot on learning on the spot. At certain times, it would be frustrating to be stuck on the same problem for hours, or trying to debug an error that I am not familiar with. But thankfully for the vast amount of learning resources on the internet, I was able to get the ball rolling a lot faster toward the end of the hackathon.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

I am super satisfied and proud of being able to learn a new programming language, and being able to build my first mobile app. In addition, I had a lot of fun with designing the layout and look of the app. There was a point in the project where I felt super stuck and didn't know how to debug my code. However, once I was able to figure it out, I noticed that my progress sped up and I was getting much more done toward the end.

What I learned

Completing this project made me realize how much I could get done, and how much I could learn in such a short period of time. I learned and experiemented with UI/UX design and got a lot of exposure to design by attending workshops. I was able to learn iOS mobile development with Swift and xCode and how I can use these tools in the future to create and materialize even more ideas.

What's next for Ace

I definitely would like to add additional features that I was not able to get to implement over the span of this hackathon. Due to time constraints, I was not able to fully implement the timer, add multiple choice features, explaination cards, and create a larger question bank. I hope that as I continue to study Computer Science, I can add on to the list of useful questions.

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