Getting captivated
As I'm finishing up Jem Young's "Full Stack for Frontends Part 2" on Frontend Masters, I find myself wanting to go deeper on these topics. This has opened up my eyes to a whole slew of technologies I knew of, but knew very little about. These technologies are just as fun for me to learn about as it has been to learn about React or other frontend technologies. While I want to remain focused on the React world, I don't think it's a waste of time to delve a little deeper into this area of web development. In fact, I think in the long run, it's going to give me a more complete understanding of the landscape than I currently have. These are also really useful skills to have than can easily be quantified on a resumé or job application, and will likely open up other doors that I didn't previously have access to. Like I've said, I think the general trend in the world of JavaScript is to be able to move across the entire stack without having issues, since everything can be written in JavaScript at this point.
After I finish up this course, I'm definitely looking for another course focusing on either NodeJS or some other aspect of the backend of development. Scott Moss has several courses that are focused on these areas and, after watching a preview of one of his courses, they look pretty compelling. I also have one last course to take of Will Sentance's, conveniently on Node and Servers called "The Hard Parts of Servers and Node.js." He has such an approachable style of teaching and I think this would be a good way to get my feet wet on these topics before jumping into courses that are a little more low-level. There are a ton of other options on Frontend Masters for these topics, as well, so I could spend quite a bit of time going into these technologies and could come out the other end with quite a few new tools in my belt.
I spent some time last night working on some CodeWars problems and felt like this time was really well-spent. This seems to be a great way to practice JavaScript and become more comfortable writing this language. With any skill, repetition is key, and CodeWars, as well as Edabit, have a ton of practice problems of varying difficulty. I have had some issues with setting up CodeWars so that it automatically moves to an exercise in the same skill level. It seems that if I go to the next exercise, it typically moves me into an exercise that is 2 or 3 levels above where I should be. In that way, it's a bit clunkier than Edabit was, but at the same time, the UI is really nice on CodeWars and there are several frills of the platform that make it pretty cool. Regardless, between these 2 platforms, I have plenty of exercises in JavaScript to gently advance my skill set.
Until tomorrow!
