Almost There

I'm on the last module involving the shopping app, which has turned out to be one hell of an involved project in Maximilian Schwarzmüller's React Native - The Practical Guide on Udemy. It started out with a 4 hour section where we built the app, almost in entirety. From there, we spent another hour on creating a proper form and handling user input with Redux. Then, we spent another hour creating an actual database on Firebase for our products and orders. Finally, we are on to the authentication of the app. This includes adding a way to login and sign up to the app with an email and password, creating a screen to handle that, adding a database for our users, and finally persisting a logged in state and a way to log out. I was almost done with this final section when I fell asleep. Instead of my usual 10 or 15 minute nap, I fell asleep for an hour and woke up ready to call it a night. This is one of the most difficult blog entries I've written, as my bed is really calling my name right now. Thus, I'll likely be a little shorter than usual.

This section has been really interesting and I've learned a lot about authentication in general, not just in React Native. We relied heavily on using Redux and Redux Thunk to be able to create a logged in state and the workflow for this, while pretty complicated, makes a lot of sense. If anything else, whenever I try to create my own app and implement a way to user signup and login functionality, I'll have a great example of how to do this. If I remember correctly, when I took Andrei Neagoie's React course, we did something similar, but of course with just React instead of React Native. We also added a way to login using Google, which seems really complicated but is really simple to hook up. When I initially took this course, I really wasn't ready for it. I was still learning React and my JavaScript skills were generally pretty bad. I wonder how useful it would be if I revisited this course now with a fresh set of eyes and more knowledge to apply. It was a long course, over 40 hours if I remember correctly, but I think I would learn something from it. Maybe, instead of creating the project they do, I could follow along with the course but create my own project along a similar line. It's something to think about as I reach the end of this course, but I think I should stick to React Native while it's fresh in my head.

Tomorrow, I have a very important phone call which I talked about yesterday. Back in November, I reached out to Will Sentance, my favorite instructor and CEO of Codesmith, on LinkedIn and just let him know how much I appreciated his courses. I really didn't think he would respond, but he did, and it turns out he had been reading my blog. I was blown away, and on top of that, he actually offered to put me through their prep course for their bootcamp, which I promptly signed up for. I've kept in touch, and in the last month, we've discussed talking over the phone, in hopes of gaining some insight from him on all sorts of topics. I have that phone call tomorrow, and I'm actually pretty nervous. I think of Will as a rock star; he's like a celebrity to me. I've watched all of his videos and truly think this teaching style is the best in the business. For me to have a platform to ask him anything I want is special. I have a lot of questions, but lately my focus has been solely on breaking into the industry in general. Since he runs a very successful bootcamp, or program, since they don't like to call it a bootcamp, I suspect he believes strongly in this process and would suggest to me to follow that path. I don't think he's wrong in a lot of ways, and that guided learning program would be very useful. I would love to discuss with him some of the up and coming technologies and languages, and where he thinks I should be spending my time. I'd like to know his thoughts on where he thinks the industry is going in the future. Mostly, I would like to hear his story of how he got to where he is today. I'm sure it's an interesting one, and I think there's always a lot to learn from the journey itself.

Until tomorrow!