I recently graduated from a full-stack web development bootcamp with General Assembly, and while I study algorithms and search for developer jobs, I decided to take a mini-break to learn how to build a slack bot.
I used Slack at my previous startup, Social Tables, to communicate with co-workers, find the free food in the office, and of course, use slack bots.
The slack bots can be so useful for increasing productivity, expressing yourself through /giphy, or even scheduling a fun outting for lunch.
My favorite slack bot is the lunch train where you can select a time and location to leave to grab lunch and fellow co-workers can join your train. It sends reminders for when to leave to all participants, and it is a great way to get to know new people in the office who love similar cusines.
As everyone knows, coding bootcamps can be very stressful. One of the ways that I coped with that stress was to read through dev jokes on reddit or google javascript cartoons. I found comfort in the dev humor, and it was a good reminder that I was indeed learning since I understood the punchlines.
For my first slackbot, I decided to create a Dev-Bot, a slack bot that would send you dev jokes when bugs make you sad.
Since I am new to creating bots, I used Slack's BotKit to build my custom bot using Node.js. This is a great resource to use if you want to create your own bot because it also walks you through using your local tunnel to connect the Slack integration.