Forward Motion

After another attempt at using an API in my own project, I decided that my knowledge level is still not advanced enough to fully comprehend everything I needed to do. I had to evaluate my next step in my learning journey: do I continue on the path of VueJS or double back to React? It doesn't look like I'll be getting the Vue-centric job that I was hoping to get, but I really enjoyed using Vue. However, the React ecosystem is so much greater than Vue's ecosystem and there seems to be a much higher demand for React jobs. I have Andrei Neagoie's "Complete React Developer in 2019" course that I'm more than halfway finished with that was all about React, so I decided it was time to finish that up. I have about 16 hours left of the 39-hour course, but those 16 hours will be intense. This guy moves incredibly fast and I end up having to pause the video every 30 seconds to be able to keep up and at least vaguely understand the concepts. I would love to knock this course out in the next 3 days, but that may be a lofty goal.

So far, this course has covered a lot of ground, including Firebase, Redux, Redux Saga, Stripe API integration, Hooks, and much more. Still to come, there's the backend of the Stripe API, GraphQL, Apollo, Context API, and some great bonus sections on Gatsby, Jest, security, and progressive web apps. I think the rest of this course will prove to be very valuable, but most of all it should shape where I go from here. There are so many concepts introduced in this course that I need to go much further with. GraphQL and Apollo are especially popular nowadays and would be excellent skills to have on my resumé. There are some great resources specifically for these tools that also use React, so I know I will have some great content to work with after I finish this course.

At the end of the day, whatever framework I choose to learn won't matter all that much. More importantly, it's the act of learning that framework and becoming advanced in it as quickly as possible. If I can exhibit the ability to fully learn something as complex as React or Vue, then I'm implying that I can learn whatever you need me to learn, and in an efficient manner. There are so many different ways to create websites, and they all have their complexities. As far as junior developer jobs go, most places won't expect you to have a full knowledge base on their particular stack, as far as I can tell. They only expect you to be willing to undergo the intense learning curve that comes with any new job in the tech industry. I have a long way to go before I can say that I know React, or Vue for that matter, inside and out. It will take several more courses to really grasp all of these concepts, and even then I expect I will have tons of knowledge gaps, but I think even senior developers have significant knowledge gaps. It's impossible to know everything in the web development world, but if you can master one corner of this universe, then that can prove to very valuable.

Until tomorrow!