On a roll
After working for a while on "The Complete React Developer in 2019," I decided to give it a break for a little while. I've had this nagging thought to get my resume done. I've tried to use a couple of template services, as well as a couple of CLI tools that created resumes from JSON data, but nothing was panning out to my liking. So, I went back to the old safety: Microsoft Word. I know, it's terrible, but darn it if it doesn't work. I finally got it to look close to what I was going for, even though I will likely change it 10 more times before I get done with. I got about halfway through and realized it would be important to attach a link to my portfolio, but my portfolio was broken! I wrote that portfolio after following a React tutorial. It was my first exposure to React, and you could tell. I didn't want to go back to it until I felt somewhat comfortable with React. I got it redeployed to Netlify, doing it through the CLI this time and using a netlify.toml to handle the process. Now, anytime I make a change and push it up to Github, it automatically redeploys, which is glorious. Eventually, I'm going to have to rewrite this entire portfolio, or refactor it for days, one or the other. It's ugly on the code side, but it looks good as a website. I added a ton of new information and projects on there; it actually looks somewhat legitimate at this point.
Once I get done with this post, I'm going to try and get back to the course. Before I stopped to work on these really important things, I was all but done with sections 16 and 17, with one more video to watch in section 17. In these sections, we added the shop data to firebase and integrated it with redux. We also added a spinner Higher-Order-Component for loading in between screens. This course, in general, has moved so fast, it's ridiculous. We've covered a ton of ground, but I would say I've only comprehended half of it, honestly. Like I've said in previous posts, my errors are way down, making the process much more efficient, which should lead to more time for learning in the long run. Still, Redux is stupidly complicated, Firebase has a ton of moving parts that I could spend months trying to break down, and we still haven't added Redux Saga, GraphQL, Apollo, and the backend for Stripe! I think it's great that they covered so many topics, but I think they should have made it a 100 hour course and just gone with it.
I reached out yesterday to the guy that runs the local React meetup to see if I could get involved in any way, and he hasn't replied. I'm pretty disappointed in the scene down here for popular technologies like React and the like; it looks like the more active meetups are for Wordpress and Ruby, which just aren't on the cutting-edge anymore. So, I decided to send the guy I talked to yesterday who is a speaker at an upcoming GraphQL meetup to see if he might have some interest in starting up a local chapter for React or the like. I'm still awaiting a response, but I think this could be a great opportunity to really get plugged in to the local community. We'll see what happens here, but at least I have some ideas of what to do from here.
Until tomorrow!
