A brave new world
In the last few days, I've been going deeper and deeper into the world of full stack web development with Jem Young's "Full Stack for Front End Engineers" on Frontend Masters. This is a series of two courses that cover a vast array of topics focused on using the command line with a bunch of really cool tools and technologies. I've been getting more and more comfortable writing both in the command line and, even scarier, Vim. Vim is a topic that most people shy away from, because it's incredibly difficult to use compared to a text editor like vsCode, but it is so powerful once you get the hang of it, which I am nowhere doing yet. Right now, I'm using it in it's most basic form, without any plugins to make it easier to work with, but it's really fun to learn. The concepts on the command line are getting a little over my head, but I think Jem understands well that the students taking this class don't have a full understanding of the command line or the other technologies he's introduced, so he's taking it slow and walking us through, step by step.
This is a course that I would either take again to gain a deeper understanding or take another course that goes into greater detail. I'm way more interested in these concepts than I thought I would be. I've said this before, but with web development, there are so many different areas one can focus on, such as CSS, JavaScript, animation, or devops. When exploring some of these spaces, the realization arises that there is so much to know in this tiny little corner. Entire careers have been devoted to single topics like these, and I'm starting to realize why. Of course, at the same time, I do believe the trend in the business is to have a general knowledge of the entire stack and be able to work across that stack. I still think the area I want to spend my time most in would be user interface with technologies like React, but I would really like to go deeper with NodeJS and other backend tools and technologies. Frontend Masters offers quite a few courses in these areas, so I may spend some time going deeper on these.
Last night, I had my second pair programming session with Matt, and it was awesome. I'm learning so much working with someone who's more advanced than me. Several times during the session he showed me some things I had no idea how to do, or showed me better ways of doing things I was doing correctly, just inefficiently. Most importantly, I felt like my technical communication skills have grown leaps and bounds just in the matter of two weeks. If I were asked to walk through a function at this point in an interview, I certainly wouldn't panic. Thankfully, Matt has had a lot of patience with me, since I know the problem set we worked through on CodeWars was fairly simple last night and I still struggled with a couple of the problems. Also, he showed me that I had set up CodeWars incorrectly and was being fed exercises that were way more advanced than I was ready for. I was under the impression that all the exercises on this platform were just ridiculously difficult, but it turns out I can work my way up just like I was doing with Edabit. I really liked Edabit as well, but I'm excited to jump back into CodeWars at this point and give it another try. Needless to say, I have plenty of exercises to work from now, and that's really going to up my skill level in JavaScript quickly. My plan is to split my time between doing these exercises and working through some courses on NodeJS and other backend-focused technologies. This should be a fun mix of work ahead for me.
Until tomorrow!
