Blog Post #2 Questions:

1) What have I accomplished so far? (Give specific details. Include the research you have done to date.
Include sources of information you have used for research, people you have spoken to, videos you have
watched, books you are reading, etc.)

I started working effectively on my Capstone project one week and a half ago.
Since I have never programmed an app, I watched a lot of YouTube videos and read a bunch of different
articles to become confident with the program I'm using (.Net Maui on Visual Studio 2022) and its coding
language.
Most of the videos I watched are from two channels: https://www.youtube.com/@visualstudio and
https://www.youtube.com/@JamesMontemagno. In both cases, the speaker is James Montemagno. I
found his videos very helpful and informative but because he gives you every detail from the beginning,
at some point I started to feel lost.
As a result, I only used his videos to understand how the program works but not to learn how to code with
C# and XAML.

To be honest, at the moment I have no idea why these two programming languages are supposed to be
different because I'm learning the same things for both of them (and currently what I did so far works thus
I don’t think I'm doing something wrong.)

To learn how to program, I'm using the official Microsoft guide they provide on their website. In
particular, I've been reading: https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/apps/maui,
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/maui/what-is-maui, and
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/training/paths/build-apps-with-dotnet-maui/.

I did a sort of plan I want to follow when it comes to programming my app. For now, the list of pages I
want to include consists of:
- main page:
- about page that explains my project and links to this website:
- deadlines page;
- chores page;
- grocery shopping list page + place for the links of the recipes;
- money budgeting page;
- time management page.

Presently, I have an (incomplete) main page, a (I think complete) about page, the basis for my grocery
shopping list page and I'm working to finish with my deadlines page.

The problem with the latter is that after adding the new deadline and clicking on “add new deadline” it
doesn't show it. I honestly don't know what to do nor who I can seek for help. I found this website on the
internet (I'll attach the link here for reference: https://github.com/dotnet/maui/issues), I guess I'll give it a
try because I don't think I can solve this problem alone as my current knowledge.
Anyways, the plan is to finish at least one page per week otherwise It will be difficult to complete
everything on time.

I still don't have any ideas on how to design the money budgeting and time management pages, at the
moment I'm not even sure I will include them because of the large number of things I'm already working
on.

Here is the link to how my app looks now (some things aren't completed yet and some will be changed, I
practiced as I was learning on the app so It's currently a bit messy:
https://www.icloud.com/photos/#063d7dBgg4EGFwRijQ3zCBSAg

2) What have I learned? Give specific examples of your learning, whether is has been positive or
negative. Some of our best learning comes from our struggles.)
I'm learning a lot regarding coding and programming an app. For example, I learnt that for each page in
the list above I have to program two different codes (one in C# and the other in XAML). Even though I
still don’t understand what’s the difference between the two of them, I learnt that depending on what
you’re programming you have to either use one page or another. The XAML page is more about
designing and sketching the outline of your page while on the XAML.cs page (which is considered an
addition to the other page) you can program in detail what every button can do and how this page is
linked to the others.

In addition to that, for each page I want to show in my application in the user view, I usually have to
program a higher number of pages. For example, for my deadlines page, so far I've programmed the xaml
and xaml.cs pages I talked about above, the xaml and xamls.cs pages showing the list of the deadlines, the
xaml and xaml.cs pages necessary for adding the new deadlines and 3 different classes linked by each of
these couple of pages.
In fact, another thing I learned is “class”. I'm still not so sure if I got it right but to my understanding,
classes are the baskets in which the information is collected. They are like the database of each page for
each user (I can’t see what users put in it because the information is registered only on their devices).
Unfortunately for me, I also have to program them and I'm struggling a bit with these. (I think that’s the
reason behind my problem on my deadlines page).
3) What still needs to be done? (Create a specific list of objectives/tasks you want to accomplish over
the next two weeks. Be detailed and realistic.)
1. I want to find the solution for my deadlines page problem
2. I want to finish working on the deadlines page (that’s more than possible if I find a solution for point 1
because I think that’s the only thing I have left regarding this page)
3. I want to work on the chores page. I think this will be the hardest page I’ll work on so I would like to
work on it without being stressed about the final deadline, thus the sooner the better. This page will
probably take the longest time to program since I will include both pieces of information about how to do
each task and a way to plan ahead all the chores.
Regarding point 3 here is how I would like to proceed:
Make a list of all the chores I want to include (it will take me 1 hour max)
Write a short paragraph for each chore, saying how it’s supposed to be done and its frequency (2-
4 hours)
Programming the main page of the chores page (it will probably be a list of all the chores) (it will
take me a long, if I don’t have any errors in what I programmed I hope it will take me no more
than 5 days of work, considering 1 to 2 hours per day)
Include in the program a way to schedule them (I hope it won’t take me long, I plan to do it in 3
days)
Add the paragraphs I wrote before in the program. (it will take me a maximum of 1 hour and a
half).