“Soon after earning her degree in computer science in 2020, Shweta Patil, Software Engineer, Marsh, began training on Unqork’s codeless platform. In the last two years, she has earned both her Associate and Professional Configurator Certificates. Most recently, her entry in the 2022 Unqork Creator Hackathon—a tool for teachers to manage their classes—was selected as a finalist.
How quickly were you able to get up and running on Unqork?
Shweta: First, I attended Unqork Boot Camp in November 2020, and then completed all the courses to earn an Associate Configurator Certificate in about one month. Within a couple of more weeks, I was working on client projects. As I worked on that project, I kept learning and discovering new things about Unqork, and that hands-on experience helped me get a handle on working on the platform.
Tell us about your award-winning Hackathon project.
I created an application called the Classroom, which is designed for teachers. Teachers can create a class on whatever subject they choose, whether over one or two terms. They can set up whatever exams are required for the class and upload an Excel spreadsheet with student details. Then anytime the teacher logs into the application, they can view the class details, and enter and view student grading.
There is also an email option that enables the teacher to send exam results to individual students and any personalized comments. And a leaderboard enables teachers to monitor the progress of all their students.
I was able to build the entire application in just 20 hours.
How did the Unqork platform enable you to build this solution so quickly?
I was able to build the login/logout pages by drawing on components in Unqork Marketplace. I just had to download the snippets from Marketplace, and that saved a lot of time building those features.
Tell us about the most interesting client projects you have worked on since becoming an Unqork Creator?
While working at my previous employer, I worked on a project in the insurance domain. The client already had an existing application that took them about a year and a half to build. And it took them six months of development every time they wanted to offer a new insurance product. They decided to migrate the entire application to Unqork with the goal of being able to release new products as quickly as possible and with greater speed to market.
With a group of five other Unqork developers, we were able to build the entire application in just four months, which really surprised our client. And we built it in a way that enables them to release a new product in just ten days, including testing. The client was really happy. In fact, they decided to migrate more applications to Unqork!
When developing any application, you have the logic and the syntax. For most developers, the syntax part, which usually involves coding, is the boring part. But we love dealing with the logic part. Unqork has removed the syntax part, so now we are not wasting our time writing code just to build a simple text field. With Unqork we are dealing with pure logic, and that is very exciting for me.
How is Unqork different from other development platforms you have worked with?
Before working on Unqork, I was trained on ReactJS and worked as a front-end developer. ReactJS is a vast Javascript library, so it took a long time to get a good handle of it. It also required a lot of coding knowledge and multiple languages to build an application. With Unqork, I didn’t need any prior knowledge of any coding language.
When developing any application, you have the logic and the syntax. For most developers, the syntax part, which usually involves coding, is the boring part. But we love dealing with the logic part. Unqork has removed the syntax part, so now we are not wasting our time writing code just to build a simple text field. With Unqork we are dealing with pure logic, and that is very exciting for me.
Has Unqork changed the way you collaborate with clients?
Every Friday, we have a client call to demo the work we have been doing. Unqork is a new technology, and the client is very curious about what it can do and all the ways it can integrate other technologies. That has helped make it a very collaborative process.
One client was so curious that he started to learn how to use the Unqork himself. So he was using the Unqork lingo with us. That was great!
Do you have any best practices to share with other creators?
Right now, I’m working on a really big project with a team of 40 or 50 developers that will be going on for years. We developers have a habit of skipping the step of writing notes about the components we are creating, which is important so that other developers understand the logic. But working in such a big team, it becomes very important to write those comments. Doing so makes it much easier for other developers to understand components and tweak them if they need to. This really helps to work collaboratively, especially because our team works in different time zones.
I also suggest that when you are building a new application, you start generating conflict analysis reports right from the beginning. Then, if you are following all the instructions and resolving all the issues, you end up with a much cleaner configuration.
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