Implemented IdeaCon Databases and Modeling with quizzes and comments.

[KennethS777]

Kenneth Silvestre's Submission

Date: 11/30/2025

BU Email: ksilv@bu.edu

Class Year: 2028
Favorite Hobby: Building Legos

Requirements

Please check off which features you have implemented:

• [y ] A catchy name and title with a cool font!
• [y ] An interesting and beautiful frontend design with a catchy title and cool fonts and colors that looks good on any screen size.
• [ y] A home page with a summary about the interesting thing you want to teach me about. I was originally planning for this to be purely academic (e.g. math, CS, physics, engineering) topics but I am expanding it to include anything. However, you should be able to teach about whatever you choose in a clear way and go in-depth about it. If your subject matter is particularly engaging, that will reflect positively on your application.
• [y ] Extra pages with more detailed information on certain topics. Make your website intuitive to navigate through, both within the pages themselves and in your choice of pages. You can structure your website however you see fit.
• [ y] A poll/quiz feature where you can check that the user is absorbing the information your website teaches about well. These quiz questions should be scattered throughout the website, and they should tell the user whether they got the answer right or not once they select it. Additionally, it should show a live count of results (like a social media poll) with the names of the users who have voted for each option. You should take time to make sure your UI for this component is intuitive to use while still including all of the features listed. A user should be able to change their result if they want, and this should be reflected in the result count.
• [ y] A comment feature on each page where users can offer feedback or ask questions based on the lesson on the page. The home page does not need a comment section, but every other page should have one.
• [ y] Deploy the frontend and backend if you can using some of the free deployment tools we talked about in the workshops!

Screen Recording

https://youtube.com/shorts/jF5ez2Q2f3c?feature=share

Written Portion

1. How did the project go? What parts of it did you most enjoy / find yourself good at?

I did not allocate as much time as I wanted to for this project. It was valuable for me technically as I have never done a end to end project before. I started later than I would have liked because I was deep in another project where I was trying to slowly teach myself new concepts. That's the same format that I wanted to take with this project, but sadly time was not on my side. The part I enjoyed the most was coming up with what I wanted the topic to be and how I would implement it. I wanted the goal of this project to be a learning experience where I learn both what I am teaching but also learn how to build a full stack application myself. The fact that I could "double my learning" made it very enjoyable. Even though the build was rushed, I am proud that I ended up with something that at least teaches some of the basics of databases and data modeling.

2. Was this technical assessment what you expected? If you had another two weeks to work on it, what would you add or change?

The assessment was more full stack than I expected. I previously had zero experience in back-end work so I came in wanting to take it slow, really understand databases and data modeling, and rely less on online tools so that I could problem solve on my own. In reality because I started too late but still wanted to turn something in, I ended up learning more on references and utilizing online help . I had to move faster than my ideal learning pace. Still, I did not want to give up on the whole thing. If I had another two weeks, I would treat this project for what it is. I would slow down and implement things line by line so I could explain each layer cleanly and really absorb the material. I would also add more ways to teach the concepts: diagrams for the data model, chunks of sql that walk the user line by line visualizing each step, and more varied questions types like fill-in the blanks. As for now I am planning to go back into the codebase, walk through it line by line, and make sure I can explain the ins and outs of the workflows.