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Leading the Charge: Greg's Triumph at the Fall In Vets Hackathon
94 Plays1 year ago
Dive into an enlightening conversation with Marine Veteran, Greg Petropoulos, the dynamic team leader behind the victorious ensemble at the Fall In Vets Hackathon. From the trenches of coding challenges to the thrilling moment of clinching the win, Greg offers a unique perspective on leadership, tech, and the drive it takes to come out on top in a high-pressure environment. Whether you're an aspiring coder, a hackathon enthusiast, or just someone intrigued by the spirit of competition and camaraderie, this episode promises a blend of tech insights and the raw passion that defines a champion. Get a glimpse into the world of hackathons, the determination of an Infantry Marine turned tech leader, and the strategy that led his team to glory. Join us as we decode success, one line of code at a time.
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Transcript
Introduction and Background
00:00:00
Speaker
And yeah, so welcome everyone to the Fallen Vets Hackathon podcast. And we got Greg Petropolis. Is that how you say your last name? Yeah, Petropolis, yeah. Sweet.
00:00:19
Speaker
So he's the hackathon winner for the 2023 June, July hackathon that we did for mental health. And his project was, yeah, one first place. So before we dive into that, would love to hear, you know, Greg, your sort of background and, you know, since this is a vet's hackathon curious, like your journey, like what led you to the Marine Corps?
00:00:47
Speaker
Uh, yeah. So, uh, you know, as many years ago, of course, I got out in 2003 late, like literally like right before new year. So almost 2004, but 2003 I was, uh, getting out and, uh, I had been in the Marine Corps before September 11th. I remember, um,
00:01:10
Speaker
being in the North Carolina, you know, in Camp Lejeune and the barracks. And we watched it. And at that point, we were ready. We were ready to go. We just didn't know who was going to go, but we were all ready to go. So that was, you know, there was a lot of stuff to happen with that. And then what led me to the Marine Corps was before that, I had been in high school and I remember Kosovo going down. I don't know if you guys remember Kosovo, but that was happening where they were doing ethnic cleansing. And I heard about this and I was like, man, like,
00:01:39
Speaker
I want to do something. My dad served in the Greek army. Greece is mandatory, you have to. So he did that. I was like, they'd be pretty awesome if I could enlist and get to go overseas and do something good. When I was young, it was full of testosterone and courage and all that kind of stuff. So I was like, this is a perfect fit. I don't want to go to college. I'm not ready for that. And that's how I ended up in the Marine Corps.
00:02:06
Speaker
Nice. So what, what made you choose the MLS that you did? Uh, yeah. So my Azlab scores were good, but, uh, and they asked me a couple of times, like, are you sure you want to do that? And I was like, yeah, that's what I want to do. Like I want to go to the infantry. That's, that's what I want to do. Um, so, uh, they assigned me as a mortarman. So I was a mortarman. Um, it was literally luck of the draw that I wasn't a machine gunner or, uh,
00:02:32
Speaker
small gunner. They were just like, literally lined us up and said, okay, you guys got these ABAP scores. You, you, you, you, you mortars. You, you, you, you small. It went like that in SOI. So I was like, cool. What are mortars? What are they do? How do they work? Damn. You guys didn't even have a choice. I remember when I went through it, we, at least we had like an option and we could select ourselves. Like where do we want to go? Did you like, how did you feel after kind of getting used to that?
00:03:01
Speaker
Uh, yes. Oh, three 41 drain. Oh, three 41. Yeah. So like, that's why it was cool. And it was like, relax, you know, the, the, you know, your platoon. Oh yeah. They are more lax. Yeah. You're just like, Oh, cool. So this is how it is. And then after that you get to the fleet and it's like, Oh no, you're going to get, you're going to get, you're going to get brand. So, um, that was an eye opener getting shipped out to North Carolina station in camp with June with three eight.
00:03:27
Speaker
and then just getting to know my platoon and knowing our drills. It was very eye-opening, but I don't regret any of it. I love it all. I still talk to the guys. One of my Marines I served with his birthday was a couple of days ago. I just always stay in touch with those guys because some of them I haven't talked to. It's been almost 20 years now, but I'll see them on Facebook and something will happen to them.
00:03:55
Speaker
I was like, hey, everything all right, check on him and stuff like that. So yeah, it's cool. Brotherhood, man. Yeah, absolutely, man. Yeah, I definitely miss all the different platoons I was with and try to keep in touch.
Transition to Education and Technology
00:04:12
Speaker
Like I was talking about Jack, our previous judge for the hackathon, and I've got a bunch of photos in my hard drive and
00:04:20
Speaker
We're just sitting here, you know like the videos and I took a lot of photos and because we were traveling, you know and It's like you know, I don't want to post them on Facebook and I just you know, I'm thinking about different like You know product ideas potentially like what would it look like to have something like that out there? but anyways, so so you're in the Marine Corps and You know you're
00:04:48
Speaker
finishing up your contract. Are you thinking about re-enlisting or are you just set, dead set on getting out? I was pretty dead set. In the infantry, it's not like a
00:05:04
Speaker
and you know this, being in the infantry, you're gonna do your four years and you're just gonna be a diehard after that, a lifer, or you're just gonna be like, I want nothing to do with this. And after four years, I think I was pretty burnt out. I just wanted to like start something new, try college, try to do something different. I could always come back, but I thought it was important just to get that growth so I could see what else I could do, because I did the Marine Corps, so I was like, okay, cool. Now I have maturity, I have confidence, I have like,
00:05:34
Speaker
I guess like life experience. So now let me go to college and try something new. So that's why I got out. Cool. And I saw in your background that you got a degree in geology. Is that right?
00:05:47
Speaker
Yeah, I got a couple degrees. Initially, when I got out of the Marine Corps, I went into community college, and this is for the people that are not good at math. I was not good at math, and I barely knew enough to get the... I knew enough just to run the mortar, and it was good. If I could get the mortar on point, get my mills right, get my map right, I was good.
00:06:08
Speaker
But yeah, I didn't, I was not a math guy at all. So it was a huge challenge for me to like get over that. So when I went to community college, I spent like one and a half years in my GI Bill doing remedial courses, like trying to get my math up to like college level and English and all that. Cause I hadn't dropped, you know, I didn't do that well in high school. So my GI Bill got ate up a lot by a lot of remediation. But I punched through it and it was like one of the biggest challenge academically for me was
00:06:35
Speaker
going from zero to graduating with a geology degree, which is sort of like an engineering degree in a way and doing like calculus level courses in physics and stuff like that. Like if I can go from that to that, that was like, that really propelled me to, I could do anything at that point. I run the Marine Corps. I went into college the first, after I got my remediation done, I did, um,
00:07:01
Speaker
I got my x-ray technology degree because I needed to work. I needed to make money. So I got that degree. Took some x-rays for about five years. And that was like my exposure to college. That was it. Two years done, or three because of remediation. But after that, working and stuff like that, I decided to go do oil and gas. And then after that, I decided I need to get back into college so that I can get a bachelor's degree so that I actually have some paper weight when it comes to applying for jobs.
00:07:31
Speaker
And that's how I ended up in geology in Las Vegas. That was University of Nevada Las Vegas.
00:07:38
Speaker
They got some really awesome geology out there. Of course, everyone knows about Vegas and what else they have out there. But they had really good professors. And if you ever drive around it and you're not looking at the lights, you'll notice that there's tons of geological structures out there that can be identified. And I've mapped, even mapped an area that became a gold mine.
00:08:03
Speaker
in Eureka, right outside Eureka, Nevada. So I mapped it and then as I was mapping it, they had been staking claims on it while I was doing my geologic map on that. So being in the Marine Corps with the mapping skills and like terrain features and stuff like that was super helpful. Like I was a walk in the park. When we got to the field, we did two weeks in the desert. I was like, okay. I was sleeping around, get up, go do whatever.
00:08:32
Speaker
And sometimes it was a drink fest in between that. So it was fun. It was a good time. Great degree. But as you can see, I'm in tech now and geology is not something I'm doing. So that
00:08:49
Speaker
industry is different and hard. And it's one of those things where you try to use your degree, but at the end of the day, you're going to make $50,000 and you're going to work 12 hours a day just starting out.
00:09:07
Speaker
in a 10 to 15 year career time span, you might get lucky and get to 80 or 90 maybe, depending on who you end up with and whatever. Some of the higher levels, like if you got a master's degree, you want to get that and a PhD, you could get paid more. But again, the amount of effort and work to put in to get to that, I found out over time was not worth it.
00:09:32
Speaker
So like, I mean, it's pretty badass that you went from like, not doing so well in math and like, yeah, dude, fuck math. And until like, going into, you know, knee deep in math, like, what was that experience
Career Shifts and Tech Exploration
00:09:48
Speaker
for you? And like, how did you kind of like, you know, settle, settle down with it and, and, you know, eventually level up in all those subjects?
00:09:57
Speaker
Yeah, I think, I think, um, yeah, so all the other subjects were worth that hard for me at all. So that's got a little traction doing like music and stuff like that. Some, you know, elective classes you take here and there and got some momentum with that. And, you know, I was in a class where in the very beginning it was like, these are polynomials, you know, this is basic, basic algebra, just like getting that back again. And once I got some momentum on that, I was good. And then I hit a wall where I had to take a summer
00:10:26
Speaker
math precalculus course. And when I took that course, it was an accelerated course because it was like, you know, it's summertime course. So and I had an instructor who was not good at all. Like this dude was yelling at people like, why don't you get it, you know, that kind of stuff. And I was just like, man, just because of this one guy, I'm gonna, I'm gonna get through this course.
00:10:47
Speaker
And I'm going to go, I'm not going to stop. I'm just going to keep this guy is like, it's like, you know, when your haters hate on you, that gives you like fire. And that's what it did for me. Like, uh, and this was like back in like 2006 or 2000, 2005 or something like that. And that's when I, that's when I was taking that course and it was just, that's what I needed. I needed some guy to tell everybody like, why don't you get it? And like, what's wrong with you? And like saying things to not just me, but like to other students and stuff like this.
00:11:15
Speaker
and write a big math calculation on the wall. And they just walk out of the room and like, what, what, what just happened? Like I got, that's what, that's my project. That's what I have to do. So I think like that is what pushed me to do better and more. And then like, um, learning more about engineering and geology, I say engineering because I initially majors a petroleum engineer. And then I decided, nah, I don't want to do that. I want to go to geology because it was more fun. It was like not so much pressure with,
00:11:45
Speaker
you know, got shareholders coming after you because you lost $30,000 today. So I was like, I wanted something that was more fun than it was, um, it like monetary at that point. Cool. So how did you, how did you transition into, well, what, yeah, what was it about tech and how did you make that shift? So yeah. Um,
00:12:12
Speaker
leaving off from my geology degree, graduated UNLV, struggled to find work. And I just said, I got to do this. I just got to go. I got to run with it. So I just literally drove out to Texas. Midland Odessa is where I landed. Huge oil town. I knew a guy I worked with before that had worked in there.
00:12:35
Speaker
I don't want gas. So he said, yeah, I just go buy this company. So I did and I was working with wire line and we did hydraulic fracturing. It's like a hand in hand, like you fracture the rock and then the wire line unit will put basically a lecture electronic wire down the well at the end of that wires and explosive.
00:12:54
Speaker
So we're putting an explosive down the hole, down the well, and it goes vertical and horizontal into the toe, they call it the foot or the toe. And then it goes there and then it explodes. And then it sets a plug and then it backs up. And then we just do that about an iterative time, like 15, 16 times. And then, so then they would frack after we plug it. So we plug it, they frack, then we do it again.
00:13:18
Speaker
they plug in refract, we do it again. So that's how that kind of how that worked. And I saw a lot of engineering stuff in there. So that's what like, I was like getting my feet wet with my geology degree to do engineering, but I saw some tech stuff too. And I was like, okay, I could keep working out here in the middle of nowhere. And, um,
00:13:37
Speaker
I just, I didn't really see it going anywhere. So what I did is I signed up with Baker Hughes. They were hiring and I got a sales job selling drill bits. So I was selling drill bits from rig to rig to rig to rig. And I saw more, more conversations with engineers and technology and data. Cause they would take, we would take pictures of the drill bits and they would like use data points to say, okay, this bit is a five or four or three. You know, they have diamonds on them and stuff like that. So these are pretty expensive things. And one drill bit could cost you like $50,000.
00:14:06
Speaker
So it was it was thick okay now I'm getting now I'm seeing things in the field that are really cool. They're not Soul geology related, but I want to learn more So we decided I got married throughout that whole point I got married and we decided to go back to North Carolina and that's That my transition from Texas to North Carolina
00:14:29
Speaker
was like where I went from oil and gas in slash sales engineering into other sales of engineering in construction industry. So I transitioned from oil and gas to construction industry. And in the construction industry, there was even more data that I was available to use during my work. I was using Power BI and stuff like that, a ton of Excel sheets, which I used before, but not to this intensity and not in like an actual workplace.
00:14:56
Speaker
just on school projects and stuff like that. So now I was like, my income was dependent on how good I was at Excel and putting a bid together and talking to homeowners and builders and stuff like that. We were selling construction materials. So it was like installation, spray foam, stuff like that. So that's where I kind of like saw the value in working in tech and data and stuff like that.
00:15:23
Speaker
And that's when I just like fully went, okay, I'm going to keep doing this job, the sales job, but I'm going to study tech on my own and I'm going to get out of sales because sales wasn't really my forte. I mean, I did, I did well at it, but it wasn't like, that's not what I wanted to do. I said, I can get into tech in North Carolina is not really oil and gas industry area. So I could get into tech, they have tons of tech jobs here and
00:15:48
Speaker
I could also like make a really good income for myself. And it's doable without having a CS degree, which I had a bachelor's degree in geology. So I mean, that was somehow, but completely unrelated. I mean, really, if you think about it, I mean, I say, like, I'm sure on applications, I fill out, I, you know, do you have a related degree? Sure. Yeah. It's a bachelor. It's related.
00:16:09
Speaker
piece of paper. But when it's behind the scenes, the only related information there would be like maybe doing reports or mathematical calculations that you're doing between computer science and geology. That's the only real relationship. But anyway,
00:16:30
Speaker
So I started for eight months. I studied, and I say eight months because it took me eight months to get VA funding to get into a bootcamp that they would pay for. This was before Vet Tech. This was before like my GI Bill was already washed out. I had no other resources. I had to figure out like how could I get the VA to help me out and just get some training. I didn't want another degree. I didn't want a PhD. I just wanted some actual training to do that.
00:17:00
Speaker
I've hearing disability, you know, the 10% and most of you guys get this, they get 10% because here's a washed out with spinal. So I was able to use that to my benefit to help them pay for vocational training.
Coding Journey and Hackathon Involvement
00:17:13
Speaker
And that's how I got sort of the back loops through the VA system. But it wasn't like
00:17:19
Speaker
program. It was something I had to work on for eight months and work with the counselor. And we finally got the funding and she's like, okay, you're approved for this bootcamp for $10,000. So they just threw 10 down and then I just did the bootcamp. So after eight months of studying the HTML and CSS, I was pretty much ready to go.
00:17:38
Speaker
All I needed to do was learn JavaScript and all the other frameworks and stuff like that. So I start the bootcamp, do well the first three weeks, fall flat on my face after that, because it's all JavaScript and like SQL. And I'm just like, I don't know what any of this is. But I worked full time, had a baby, had been married, still married, and then had that course every day and weekend. So I was fully on. I was waking up at 4 a.m.
00:18:06
Speaker
not like I was waking up at 4am the first eight months and I just said this is it this is my routine this is it what does it cost for me to be successful what does it cost does it cost time does it cost effort does it cost energy I can do all that I will do all that so I said 4am every day four to eight go to work from eight to six come home
00:18:28
Speaker
do family stuff, get rest, get up at 4 a.m. again, go work out, whatever. So it was just every day, just that discipline, 4 a.m., 4 a.m., 4 a.m. So when I went to boot camp, 4 a.m., 4 a.m., they were, I was getting through projects that people were barely understanding what was going on. I'm not saying I was, you know, I wasn't better than them. It was just putting in more effort and more discipline and more time. And over that period of time, I actually never stopped. I got out of that little six month, yeah, it's a six month boot camp for part time.
00:18:58
Speaker
for part-time, yeah, that took me six months to do. And then I had great instructors, a great group of kids were there, non-traditional workers, stuff like that. And then after that, I just said, I'm not gonna stop, I'm not gonna stop, 4 a.m., gonna keep going until I get a tech job. So I did that, I worked my sales job, and then I woke up at 4 a.m., now with more skills, better skills, start building more projects, building a portfolio.
00:19:28
Speaker
reading as much as I could. I wouldn't, I'd be on a job and there was downtime. You know, I got Brad Traversy on my phone, YouTube video. I don't even have a computer. I'm not even like, I'm just listening to him while I'm at a job and we're having downtime. Just cause I need, I need to absorb and feel all that there is to feel so that when people talk to me about tech, I know what I'm talking about. I know what they're saying, stuff like that. So.
00:19:53
Speaker
So some motivating trash right there. That's awesome. And so you have done a successful transition into tech. And so how did you get a whiff of like hackathons? And what was your first hackathon? Like what, what got you, how did you gravitate towards hackathons?
00:20:14
Speaker
Yeah. So I, I knew that people talked about like, yeah, you should do a hackathon. That's, that's the thing that people do. And I was kind of scared at first I had signed up with, uh, there was like, uh, there's a data science like hackathon that happens every year and I always get their emails and I was always kind of timid. I was like,
00:20:34
Speaker
And that's not really my thing. And I was interested, but I just didn't know how to do or what to do about it. So I disregarded it. And then as I grew in tech, I started to realize like hackathons are good. People are doing them. They're helpful. You can learn a lot. Like this is, this is a good thing. I need to do this.
00:20:50
Speaker
So my first attempt was to join Marine Coders, which is where you found me. And they had already done their hackathon, but I was working on their projects that were sort of MVPs. I started improving them as much as I could, forms and stuff, just like building them and trying to bring it off of a really messy JavaScript MVP that was set up on a hackathon. I would just build that into React and make a front end.
00:21:18
Speaker
And then we work on it a little bit here and there and has been pushed to production. Yeah. But I mean, it's sort of like a side project right now. So like, that's what I started to like get into you contacting me. And I was like, this is it. I mean, let's do this. I haven't done a hackathon. I'm ready to do it. I feel confident in my skills. I can join a team. I didn't want to join a team in being a hackathon where I was just lost because of the boot camp experience.
00:21:44
Speaker
the coding boot camp, the coding boot camp experience, I was so lost there. After the first three weeks, I was like, I don't really like that feeling. I'm willing to be in it again, but at least have some conceptual foundations. So I thought at this point, I actually could have done it earlier. But at this point, I was like, well, I got some good foundations. I know what kind of what's going on. I've built a lot of projects, you know,
00:22:10
Speaker
I'll do this and I'll help people along the way too. Cause now I can pull people that maybe they didn't go to boot camp or they're thinking about it or whatever. I can pull them up and say, Hey, look, like this is a, you know, try this, do this, you know, or, you know, what you have any questions or whatever. So like, I felt better as a teacher, um, and, and being a student is okay and fine and all that, but I just feel like I had more to offer as a person that could explain it and teach it a little bit.
00:22:39
Speaker
Yeah, that's awesome. And so you've done a couple hackathons and tying him back to the Marine Corps. What would you say, like the Marine Corps experience, like how that shaped and leading and participating in hackathons? Are there any, is there any overlap between the two?
00:23:02
Speaker
Definitely is. I think the way the Marine Corps, you know, our, we're brotherhood. We look out for each other. So that's one of the biggest things I think veterans have to learn how to deal with or Marines that get out have to learn now you're a veteran. It's different out here. Not everyone's going to get your back, right? Not everyone's looking to your left and right like it was. You might be fooled by that where you go. So I think understanding that I was in a group of people that
00:23:31
Speaker
kind of know about that culture made it easier. Like I was like, Okay, cool. So these people, they're here to help. Like we're all looking out for each other. It's not like a workplace where it's just everyone's out to get their own promotion. So I was like that, that was helpful to have that culture. But then the other part for you know, just bringing Marine Corps skills was the all the intangible ones.
00:23:50
Speaker
you know, being, you know, being having initiative, having discipline, getting up in the morning when you don't want to get up doing it, you know, whether it's working out or doing coding or whatever, like just that, all those things that you learn in the Marine Corps, all those disciplinary things that you learn,
00:24:07
Speaker
We're so helpful in just maintaining like even, even in the code, like even doing the actual code, like, okay, so this is not congruent. Like this needs to be fixed and I'm going to fix it right here on the spot and knowing what order to put like the importance, like, okay, so this needs to be fixed, but that can be done in two weeks when I'm not worried about it. So I need to look at this thing over here. That's really important. And this is going to make the project break if we don't fix that right away, or at least put more effort onto that side. So kind of.
00:24:35
Speaker
the leadership in the Marine Corps where you learn how to delegate and you learn how to assess the situation quickly. And like those skills came into play. Awesome. And so for this previous hackathon, what sparked the idea for, um, the equine therapy app?
Development of Equine Therapy App
00:24:53
Speaker
So, uh, spoke with the group. Uh, I had a really great team. Everybody was very collaborative. I give props to all of them. They all did really good, but we were coming up with ideas.
00:25:06
Speaker
Some ideas had already been done, like a pill counter, like a scheduler for pills and stuff like that. And there was a couple ideas thrown around. And I came up with this idea because I was looking around the VA and I was like, what are people not getting? What are vets not getting access to? What are some things they could use that could help them?
00:25:27
Speaker
Um, so I started looking at therapies and then I realized like, okay, so there's all kinds of these acute puncture and stuff like this, but I'm saying horse therapy sounds really cool. I'm like, I never done it before. Um, I heard of people with PTSD having that, um, not just in the military, but even like first responders and stuff like that. So I was like, this would be a cool thing. Like there should be access in my opinion to horse therapy for anyone in the VA that wants to get that help should be able to get that help or get that therapy or try it out, test it out.
00:25:57
Speaker
So what I noticed was there was only a couple of VA's that had it just by doing a Google search. So I was like, okay, so only a couple of them have it. Let's find out who all has it. And if we can connect that into like an app where people could look up, veterans could look up where in respect to their location, is there a location that has it? And what's the contact information? What do you do? How do you do it? Like, what's it about? So that was like the,
00:26:27
Speaker
That was like the, you know, the mean potatoes of the app was like, let's show people where they can get this kind of help because you can Google search it and you spend all day on Google and it's like, well, you know, why isn't there a way to fluidly get to that information and have more than just Google search, like other information about what it, you know, you know, who wants to Google all day? I don't, I want my information right away quickly.
00:26:53
Speaker
So I thought that this app would be really cool and to also connect the added feature was to connect the third parties to third party horse therapy providers to the VA so they could get funding. Cause there is providers that aren't getting funding and they could use that funding and that will connect more veterans with more horse therapy locations.
00:27:18
Speaker
So could you walk us through what the user experience looks like from using it? Yeah. So just verbally? Yeah, just at a high level. What does it look like from the veteran's perspective? So the veteran goes to the website. Then what they'll see is a header hero image just to be light on the eyes a little bit.
00:27:47
Speaker
There's navigation at the top so you can go from each link you want to, you know, more information about what horse therapy actually is, stuff like that. And then as you scroll down, there's going to be a drop down box and it's going to drop down all the states that actually have VA facilities that have that kind of service, that therapy.
00:28:09
Speaker
And then you will click the state you want to pick to look up to find out if they have it. And then you will click submit. And then that will provide you a link of all the for that state, all the horse therapy providers available in that state to you. So basically, I think your state submit it and it'll tell you where and what to do. And then what's and then what's what's that experience for the third party?
00:28:37
Speaker
providers that connects to the VA for grants. What does that look like? Yeah. So that was something that kind of evolved from the app. We were like, well, we're connecting veterans. Let's connect the other people too. Let's be the middleman of this whole thing. So we decided to have the ability for, if you were a third party provider, that you could go onto our website and look up
00:29:01
Speaker
like get the funding started at least. So giving them the proper information, we gave them some pitfalls, what to look out for. And then
00:29:10
Speaker
The future goal would be to be more intense on that. That was kind of our icebox goal was to like, make it as seamless as possible where they could just like fill out a form from us. We sent it to the VA, it's done, right? That was what our goal was, but what we ended up doing, because Hackathon, I knew so much, it was just having the form downloadable so they could fill out and then they would have to send it to the VA. So the concept was there, but it needed more work and intensity. But our primary focus was gonna be, let's make sure the veterans are taken care of.
00:29:39
Speaker
And then we'll start helping the external factors. Cool. So diving into the tech side of things, what made you move forward with an MVC model view controller versus monolithic type architecture? Architectural decision was
00:30:05
Speaker
We wanted to have full control and something we were familiar with. We were all familiar with MVC. We could have used monolithic. I just don't know that much about that kind of architecture. I didn't want to push that on because if I couldn't lead it, how could I teach something I barely even know? I knew MVC pretty well. It's pretty commonly used, and everybody was very comfortable with that setup of architecture. That made sense. Then the next decision made was,
00:30:34
Speaker
Should we use JavaScript throughout? And the answer was yeah, because we all could read and understand JavaScript. So we're going to use it on the front end and back end. So that pretty much narrowed it down to we'll use React on the front end. That'll be our view.
00:30:50
Speaker
And then our models will be the schema for Mongoose and MongoDB. And then our node and express would be our backend using JavaScript. So then we had like a nice flat field where everybody could speak and teach and learn from JavaScript rather than like, you know, C sharp on the backend and JavaScript on the front end, and everyone's learning JavaScript. So it's like, like that, that it makes wanted to keep it level.
00:31:19
Speaker
So you guys chose MongoDB with Mongoose over like a traditional SQL because you wanted to keep everything uniform and sound like it was a good learning experience for the teammates that were in the project.
00:31:34
Speaker
Yeah, so we decided that we were just using JSON data. We were either sending JSON data or getting it. And it was just like, well, we're not really doing expensive calculations. There's no relation database that worked that we need to do. Heavy lifting wasn't necessary.
00:31:56
Speaker
So we decided first we would kind of discuss, but we're going to maybe use Airtable, because it would be easy to use or APIs easy, just as basically an Excel sheet that's an API. So like, well, that might be something we could use. But then MongoDB goes pretty seamless, and the schema goes pretty seamless together with Mongoose that we were just like, okay, let's just move to Mongoose.
00:32:18
Speaker
and MongoDB, MongoDB being like the schema validator, and then like MongoDB could just hold it, hold our collection of all the Arlo JSON objects that we're going to need, and retrieving it with Node and Express just goes together. So it was pretty easy to do. So yeah, we could have used other technologies, but I think
00:32:39
Speaker
Since I was leading this project, I felt the most comfortable with that and no one objected to, hey, I just, I even put it out there. I said, if anybody else wants to work on the backend and they have good experience, take it. Like you have it, it's yours. Um, so I did, so we did, you know, there was no like you do this and that's all you do. It was everyone shared responsibilities, very open discussion. If you had expertise in one or one technology or another,
00:33:08
Speaker
And you feel like you could run with it and then you would do that. I mean, it was offered to everybody to do that, but everybody just, you know, everyone was comfortable with what was going on. And I suggested let's just use MongoDB and express Mongoose for the schema and we'll roll with that. So how did you approach testing? I noticed you guys use Cypress for end to end. Yeah. Uh, what made you guys, how did you guys approach it?
00:33:35
Speaker
So testing was something I brought in to play with everybody. I had just learned about Cypress and I played with it at work a little bit. So I was like, wow, Cypress really does take a lot of that like mental gymnastics out of the way. So this would be a perfect opportunity to try to use it for Intend testing. Cause I mean, their documentation is great. Their demos are great. They're, you know, they're, they're just, they're easy to use because it has a really good DX
00:34:03
Speaker
you know, design, you know, developer experience. So that was like my first reason why I reached for Cyprus. And then for Indian testing, what I thought would be the most important unit testing would be to unit test every single navigational link. I mean, you can test everything you want, right? But there's a little bit of cost to that. You know, you want to spend too much time testing every little thing. Some things just need to work because we all know that this button is going to work a certain way, right? Like,
00:34:33
Speaker
no reason to overkill and test that little tiny icon or whatever. That's going to work. But when it comes to navigational links or something like that with higher importance, I tested every single one of the navigational links as the first layer, and then the second layer was the end-to-end. Could I run a user all the way through it and back out, and would it work? And it did. Smart. Easy. Nice.
00:34:58
Speaker
And so for plugging into the VA API. How was that experience like and have you done that before? I never done it before. We got some sandbox keys is how we started. We just went to the API and got the sandbox keys and we started. I just started playing with it. I started like pushing on it and pulling on it. See what would happen and you know what? What API gives him what Jason body back? Like what am I getting out of this? What is any of this information useful? Is any of it clean?
00:35:28
Speaker
Is any of it duplicative? Is any of it like sort of mystical, like you're like, why is this here? And it's not over there, you know, not congruent. So I just, I just hammered on it a little bit and I decided like, this is a good API. We should use this. I don't know any other way we could get VA API, any VA, besides scraping every single website. So I was like, this API is pretty good. Let's try to use this. And that's how our scraper sort of evolved. We,
00:35:55
Speaker
we were getting good information from the VA and we use the API, but it wasn't giving us that granular information that we really needed for the unique therapies that only a few VA locations have. That's how we pulled in the scraper from Playwright into that. So they changed the API I think a couple of weeks ago.
00:36:19
Speaker
I didn't need to look at that but yeah they they made some improvements to it, and they and I've actually submitted a bug report on on their UI for, you know, you, if they had GitHub I would just make a PR. Yeah, because it's government so basically just
00:36:37
Speaker
Send them the little dialogue box and say, hey, I don't remember what it was. It was a while back. But hey, this is not working correctly. Or this is a duplicate or whatever it was. I don't remember at the time, but I did submit it. Hopefully, they take a look and you fix it.
00:37:00
Speaker
Could you talk to me about some of the advantages of using Node and Express for the backend servers? Yeah, so everyone knows Node has tons of documentation. It's pretty easy to use in your terminal. You spin up a server, it's not too difficult to spin up a very super basic server on the backend. So that was why we use that.
00:37:29
Speaker
and all our dependencies were lined right up with it. So then we added our express, and that just adds that middleware, helps us with middleware. It just makes that extra layer of finesse on top of nodes, so it doesn't have to be so rocky.
00:37:44
Speaker
So so like for routes like yeah the node server is saying go to this route but then they express middleware is taking that route and can you giving you that granularity of okay I want to get the for example.
00:38:01
Speaker
I'll just make up an example, like the user's login information. So with Express, I'm able to look at the params that are sent in from the request body that's sent through. Then we can say, OK, well, if this is in the database, then, you know,
00:38:16
Speaker
don't let them log in. If it's not in the database, send them to the register page, something like that. That middleware was really helpful with node and connecting the frontend and stopping anything that would come through that we didn't want. If you had errors or something like that, we'd add more middleware to that.
00:38:37
Speaker
Yeah, we mostly used Express in the controllers. MVC architecture was just heavy on the controllers. And that's where we sat, so yeah. Sweet. You being in tech now for the past few years, who would you say some of your...
Influences and Inspirations
00:39:00
Speaker
Who do you say you would look up to?
00:39:04
Speaker
Um, you know, I, I wish there was military, um, people that I liked that were in tech, uh, especially if there was like Marines that were like awesome coders, that would be so cool. They're hard to find. Um, and they probably don't want to be seen if they are good. Cause they just want to.
00:39:21
Speaker
Keeps themselves out of bed but yeah who i follow in tech is like i find them on twitter i find them on on prs i'll be looking at or looking through libraries and seeing their name quite a bit you see.
00:39:36
Speaker
So like Wes Boss, he's one of the guys, you'll see these guys that like the React conferences too as well. So any speaker at a React conference is a good one to follow. Anyone who's putting out Udemy courses that are really good, Steven Grider, he's one of the really good data structures and algorithms guys with JavaScript. So he's sort of like a backbone that I use just to sit on. There's no front end stuff on it. It was just just data structures and algorithms.
00:40:06
Speaker
Then Brad Traversy is the one I used a lot of for figuring out how to connect over the pieces together. If you spin up a Create React app, how do we get all these things to work together and flow from front to back? He has a couple of courses that are React front to back. I would highly recommend doing those. I've done them. I put PRs on his GitHub for some of his projects, first little things here and there that I found or wanted to improve.
00:40:35
Speaker
But yeah, other ones are George Mohler. He's like a huge React guy on Twitter. So he'll always post cool demos of what he's found out in React that really helps improve your component composition or something like that.
00:40:56
Speaker
It's pretty cool to see someone showing you, not just talking about it like, hey, read the docs, whatever. Yeah, that's cool. But he's actually has a really cool UI of like, okay, take your component and do this and this and make it children here. And then you can insert, they don't want to do double re-winters or whatever. So it's pretty cool to see that kind of stuff.
00:41:17
Speaker
So I keep eye on Twitter as well. I'm not heavily into Twitter, like I'm not like a huge influencer or whatever. But I like to sit on there and just kind of scroll through, dead scroll, and look at what's going on in tech and new technologies and TypeScript drama. Yeah. Who are some folks that you're following for TypeScript? The prime agent. He's one of the guys that does a front end master's course, if you're ever
00:41:46
Speaker
a front end masters courses are pretty intense. And I heard pretty good. I haven't done one yet. I really want to do one. But he's one of the main instructors on there. And he jokes around a lot too. But some of the stuff he mentions or talks about is pretty good. The React query, I forget his name. What's his name? The guy who made a React query, I forget his name.
00:42:12
Speaker
Um, he's on my, on my feet too. And he has like, this guy comes, he's a genius. He comes up with these like wild questions I've never even heard of. Um, and Kyle Simpson, he's the other one who's like a JavaScript master. And there's a couple, um, um, Namaste, Namaste JavaScript. He's a good one too to watch. Um, he's the one I learned a lot about the event loop, about the way he explained it was just like Brian on. I was like, dude.
00:42:41
Speaker
could look up Namaste, JavaScript Namaste. And he just, he fine grain walks through every step of promises and all kinds of stuff like that. Awesome. Bringing it back to the hackathon, could you talk about some of the highs and lows through those, the three day event? Yeah, so highs and lows, some of the highs were everyone was excited. We all started off on the right foot. We were putting in the work,
00:43:10
Speaker
We were looking at the designs and setting up our stuff was coming out as looking good, like every step of the way. One of the things I put into play was a very strict Git flow. I wanted to make sure that everyone just wasn't pushing to the main. That would be bad. So I made sure everyone understood. What we want to do is push to development and then we'll merge to production later.
00:43:40
Speaker
So by doing that, it kind of forced people to like write a real PR and like there's recommendations on how to do it on our reading and stuff like that. And like, you know, tell us what problem you're trying to solve, you know, stuff like that. But I will say one of the low points was during the hackathon, when things were going full speed, we had to kind of push that off.
00:44:00
Speaker
In the beginning, it worked really well. But during the middle of the hackathon, we had to like say, okay, we just don't have time to like wait for someone to approve a PR because we're going to merge conflicts, we're gonna have more trouble than ever. So we just anytime needed to push the main to hey, I'm pushing the main, anyone want to look at this? Okay, I'm not. Okay, good. Go for it. So that was sort of a, I guess I could say that was a low point, but it was something that was necessary to do.
Future Plans and Advice
00:44:28
Speaker
So you talked about, you know, collaboration or potential collaborations with nonprofits like healing heroes through horses. So how are those collaborations? How would that work? Like we're collaborating with him.
00:44:45
Speaker
Yeah. Cause I think you talked about that in your project description. Yeah. So Atlantis was, uh, she was new to tech and she was very articulate, uh, with her read me's and stuff like that. And she was on it. And she, I think she wasn't, when I reached out to, uh, heroes, the heroes one and, you know, just to find out some information about how they work, what they do, can they, you know, would they want funding and stuff like that? So that was sort of like our,
00:45:13
Speaker
are like feel for the, for the market. Like, is this something that they might want to do? So I, she could answer that better, but I think that that getting, cause we found out also, so on top of that, so we found out also that there was nonprofits who were taking horses that were going to be slaughtered and they were taking them and making them into horse therapy horses.
00:45:39
Speaker
So the horse was going through its own PTSD, its own traumatic anxiety or whatever it was. They broke the flag or whatever. They're going to go to the glue factory.
00:45:51
Speaker
So by that horse getting its recovery, it actually recovered with the veteran, um, that they were trying to, so they were saving two people, but that's what they were saying. They're saying we could save two lives by doing this. So that was a really cool thing. It was like, wow, that's, that's pretty cool. So these nonprofits aren't just like what you think of, like, they just want money or they just want to, you know, that kind of thing. These were, these nonprofits are very authentic. They're good people. They're trying to.
00:46:21
Speaker
you know, help veterans at the same time help, you know, horses or whatever, or, you know, rehabilitate them and stuff like that. So they don't all do that. But some of them were doing that. So we found out that was pretty cool. So we could collaborate with with those guys, can we can we reach out to them and get their information about lettuce, we wanted to do is have a pathway to send veterans to them outside the VA.
00:46:47
Speaker
because we knew the VA couldn't do it all and they probably don't have visibility on this. They barely do. That's why there's only like eight places that eight VA locations actually do this or something like that. So like our, to answer your question, can we set up a pathway to the third party going around the VA and getting veterans the services they need regardless of the VA is going to be acting on it or not? That was sort of like our approach to that.
00:47:17
Speaker
Cool. Wrapping things up here. What would you tell an active duty infantry Marine considering coding? I would say you can do it. Um, you definitely can do it. You have the skills nest. You have everything you need. All you gotta do is just go do it. That's all you gotta do. You, you could probably, I probably want to spend too much time reading books cause I get outdated. So what you need to do is keep up with tech.
00:47:47
Speaker
free code camp, learn some basics, some of the, there's so many free resources, maybe pick up a Udemy course, follow along. You don't, you just let them tell you what to write and you start writing it and eventually you'll be writing it on your own without even listening to anybody. So I'd say like that muscle memory would help. I'd say you're going to go into a great field. You're going to go into an industry where you're going to get paid good. And amongst your peers, you're going to be someone that's,
00:48:17
Speaker
got the fortitude to move forward with projects or say, hey, we just can't do that. Or, hey, I can do that. I can do that tomorrow morning. I can get that done and move the flag forward as much as you can. Because there is times when you need to learn to say, hey, that's not our requirement. Or that's not part of the scope that has been illustrated to us. So we can't do that until that's been added in.
00:48:46
Speaker
Yeah, I would say if you're an infantry Marine, and you're looking to get into coding, you're gonna make good money, you're gonna put in some work, it's certainly possible. It's not going to be easy. It's going to be hard, you're going to learn a lot, you're gonna have to study a lot, and you're gonna have to give up some time. And you're going to be on your way to, you know, within a short amount of time, less than a four year degree, you're going to be on your way to making some really good money and having an improved lifestyle. Awesome.
00:49:14
Speaker
So throughout this process of the hackathon, what's been the most surprising thing you've learned either about tech or yourself, the veteran community, if you had to put a finger on it? What I've learned is that I try, so what I've learned is there's going to be a lot of noise.
00:49:43
Speaker
And in order to punch through that noise, you're going to have to be pretty vigilant about who you're listening to and why and what. For me, I was able to filter out some of the noise and just say, let me just do free code camp. Let me just do HTML and CSS.
00:50:06
Speaker
Now, I never thought I would be doing HTML and CSS for eight months, or I didn't know if this was useful or not, but it was very useful. It helped me in a lot of debugging. But what I learned is just having that grit, having the grit and punching through, and there's going to be a lot of noise, and there's going to be a lot of little bubbles like on Twitter. There is places on Twitter where people
00:50:31
Speaker
will be mad because you use JavaScript on the front end and back end, right? And it's just like, you can't listen to all that. You just got to do day by day foot, one foot in front of the other. Just like when you go on a 20 mile hump, you're not thinking about mile 20. You're thinking about, I need a smoke brick. Let me get these feet in front of me first. You know what I mean? So yeah, one foot in front of another and just, I just learned more about how much grit I have. Just punching through it even more. Awesome.
00:51:02
Speaker
Yeah, as we wrap up with our last question here, what message or call to action would you like to leave with the audience today? I would say if you are interested in coding, I would first do some coding to see if you even like it. If you do like it, start doing more research. I want to go full board. I'm just going to be a programmer right now and just go get a CS degree. Don't do that. Just research it.
00:51:32
Speaker
Learn more about it. Ask more questions. Go to some meetups. Talk to people in the industry. Get involved in a hackathon. That's going to help you out a lot. And just be true to yourself.
00:51:50
Speaker
It's not just about the actual coding. It's not just putting together an object and making it a loop through it. There's going to be times you're going to have to use soft skills. You're going to have to be able to talk to people. Your biggest challenge won't be the coding. It will be getting the job. That's going to be your biggest challenge. These hackathons, these open source projects, these contributions you're making, these projects you're working on, your side projects, keep them going because those
00:52:19
Speaker
I'm going to give you the skills and exposure you're going to need when you go on an interview and they ask you about a data structure. And they say, can you put a stack and queue together? And you can say, yeah, I can do that. And then they test your soft skills. So I would say, get your hard skills, tech skills down, and get your soft skills prepared to be able to have a casual conversation. Because that's what a real good interview is going to be super casual. If it's not like that, then you're probably not in a good interview. But get the dev job, because that's going to be the hardest challenge you'll have through everything.
00:52:50
Speaker
Thank you. Yeah. Thank you for that. And I appreciate you coming on, Greg. I really do, man. Thanks for coming on. Glad to be on here. Bye, Albert. Thanks, man.