Objective of the week

The goal of this week was to take the next real step toward full-stack development.

Until now, everything lived either in a static page or entirely in the frontend. This week I wanted to:

• Build my first backend API using Python
• Connect a React + TypeScript frontend to that API
• Get frontend and backend to talk to each other
• Learn the basics of working with GitHub Codespaces and the terminal

---

What I built

I built a small Learning Log application with a clear separation between frontend and backend.

Backend

• Python + FastAPI

• Endpoints to:

• create entries

• list entries

• toggle a “favorite” flag

• Automatic API documentation via Swagger

Frontend

• React + TypeScript
• Fetches data from the backend API
• Displays entries
• Allows creating new entries and marking them as favorites

This is the first project in this challenge where:

• the frontend depends on a backend,
• data flows over HTTP,
• and things break if URLs, ports, or environments are wrong.

---

What I learned

This week was packed with fundamentals that I had either forgotten or never really learned properly:

• How to work with the terminal again:

• navigating folders

• activating virtual environments

• running servers

• The basics of GitHub Codespaces:

• it’s a real Linux machine in the cloud

• processes stop when you close it

• ports must be explicitly exposed

• How FastAPI works:

• defining request and response models

• automatic Swagger documentation

• How a frontend talks to a backend using:

• fetch

• JSON

• environment variables

• Why frontend apps need a configurable API base URL

This week made it very clear that modern development is less about syntax and more about understanding the system as a whole.

---

What was hard / surprising / confusing

Quite a few things 😅 — and that’s exactly why this week mattered.

• I initially treated things in requirements.txt like terminal commands
• I repeatedly forgot to activate the Python virtual environment
• uvicorn: command not found taught me a lot about how environments really work
• Understanding where my code was running vs where my browser was running took time
• The concept of forwarded ports in Codespaces was new and unintuitive at first
• Knowing which URL the frontend should call (and why localhost doesn’t work here) was confusing
• Forgetting to restart the frontend after changing .env caused a lot of head-scratching

Overall, the hardest part wasn’t coding — it was mental models:

• what runs where,
• what talks to what,
• and what needs to be restarted when something changes.

---

What I’ll do next week

For Week 5, I want to build on this exact architecture:

• Keep React + TypeScript on the frontend

• Keep Python on the backend

• Add the first “smart” behavior

• something that processes text

• analyzes, summarizes, or enriches entries

This will be my first step toward AI-adjacent functionality, built on top of the foundations laid this week.

Week 4 was slower, more frustrating, and more educational than the previous ones — which is probably a good sign.