JavaScript Again

Last night, I started a tutorial from the Net Ninja that built a project management app from scratch using Firebase with React and Redux. I was really excited to take this course; I thought it would be another great opportunity to learn about Redux and get a little better with the system. It was going along fine and I actually did feel a lot more comfortable in the setup of Redux than I had in the past. I ran into a small issue last night, but it wasn't terminal and I was able to get past it. I got about 2 or 3 hours in and called it a night. Today, I sat down to continue the course. I was basically starting the day from the beginning of the setup of Firebase. I got everything going on the Firebase side and started to hook it up to my app. I had everything set up to send data from my site to Firebase, gave it a test run, and nothing happened. First, I looked for errors on my side, backtracking through the videos to try and find anything I had placed incorrectly or misspelled, but I couldn't find anything. Then, I went to the comments. I found a flurry of comments about how the setup with Redux had been completely changed, and the changes were breaking. The way Shaun set it up in his tutorial was no longer usable. So, while I did learn quite a bit in the 4 hours I spent on this course, it will turn out to be a waste of time overall. Unfortunately, this is an issue I come across quite often with Youtube videos and typically stick to the most recent tutorials and ignore anything older than 6 months. This one was over a year old, and I should have known better.

This left me with needing another mountain to climb. I still have my Frontend Masters account frozen, so I looked first to Youtube. I actually found a really good looking course on the full stack with GraphQL, Node and MongoDB with React. This looked pretty enticing, but I have a problem with MongoDB: they only allow to have one free database active at a time before you have to start paying for it, and I just created an app with Mongo. So, I kept looking. I thought, maybe it's time to see if there's anything new on Udemy. I looked first at Gatsby courses, since that's been my focus lately, and I found a couple that looked pretty good, but not great. My favorite instructor on Udemy is Colt Steele, so I decided to search his name to see if he has anything new out. Lo and behold, he had a brand new course with Stephen Grider, The New Modern JavaScript Bootcamp, jam-packed with nearly 40 hours of content for the ridiculous price of $9.99. I jumped on this, and figured there wasn't a better time to get back into JavaScript than now, leading up to my CSPrep bootcamp with Codesmith in about a week and a half. I suspect I can finish this bootcamp, or get pretty close, by the time I start that, and I will have these concepts fresh in my mind. I should be ready to build on these concepts and hammer the ideas in, once and for all.

I always like to watch an entire course, even if some of the material is redundant, and that's certainly the case, so far. In the first couple of hours of the course, we are going over the very basics of JavaScript, as if I've never seen it before, as in covering different types of values, how to build a basic function, and other fundamental ideas of JavaScript. While it has been kind of boring up to this point, it's always good to hear these basics told from a different perspective. I have the speed turned up slightly because it's so rudimentary, but it won't be long before we're exploring the more exciting and complex topics of JavaScript. The first 20 hours of the course are strictly conceptual, with nothing being applied. This section is taught entirely by Colt Steele. The second half of the course is all about building projects in plain vanilla JavaScript, and is taught by Stephen Grider. I've never taken any of his courses, but he has quite a few to offer on Udemy, and they all seem really good. If, after completion of this course, I like his style, I may check out some of his other material. Beyond this course, though, it's tough to commit to anything, since I'm going to be taking that bootcamp. That could really mold my decisions going forward.

Until tomorrow!