Trudging through Context API and GraphQL
I got stuck last night dealing with some deployment issues to Heroku with the major project associated with Andrei Neagoie's "Complete React Developer in 2019" and ended up passing out in frustration way earlier than I anticipated. Since I had the day off today, I wanted to study until at least 12, but I ended up only making it until 11. Nonetheless, I completed the Stripe API setup for the backend last night and moved on to learning about Context API this morning while my daughter was napping. I had already worked with the Context API in Colt Steele's "The Modern React Bootcamp," but this is a complicated concept that will take several more pass-throughs to truly understand. It's definitely much easier to work with than Redux, though. Also, after a little sleep, I was at least able to re-enact my last deployment, which has the app in full working order, minus a few unnecessary add-ons like the backend for Stripe. I then went to check on this blog and realized that I had somehow deleted everything in my local folder on my old computer. I have no idea how this happened, since I haven't used that computer since I got this one, and the folder and file structure was fully intact, with all of the files being blank. It was strange, but it finally forced me to figure out how to deploy this blog from my current computer, something I had been avoiding for a couple of weeks now.
Now, it's on to a pretty massive section on GraphQL and Apollo. I've just started this section and have only gotten a taste for these technologies so far, but they seem to be pretty useful. GraphQL definitely seems like it has a completely different way of doing things, but that's sort of the point, I think. This section spans about 2 and a half hours that will likely take me twice that long, but I hope to finish that tonight and move on to the next section on mobile responsiveness tomorrow at some point. Looking back over the final project of this course, it seems unbelievable to me that we covered this much ground. This project has to be over 50 files and covers React front to back, with all of the bells and whistles in between. I definitely would not recommend this course to someone who's never seen React before; you would likely quit within the first couple of sections due to the frenzied pace. This was my second course on React, the first being about 40 hours long, so I had some experience coming into it, and I'm still lost half the time. These are not basic topics, though, and I think anything like this needs to be attacked multiple times to really, truly understand it. Eventually, it will become second nature, but I'm nowhere near that point, yet.
On another topic, I've decided to publicly commit to the Twitter challenge, "100 Days of Code." The challenge is to code for at least an hour every day for 100 days, tweet about it, and encourage others going along in the same process. There is a great community of aspiring developers built around this challenge, and I think it will be a great way to stay motivated. I plan on posting something every day on here with a link to my blog entry for the day, in case anyone wants a glimpse into my trials and tribulations. I've been coding every day for at least 3 to 4 hours since May 26th this year, so I'm already coming up on 100 straight days of dedication. However, I'm starting this challenge from Day 1. It's not intimidating to me since I've already done it once; in fact, I already plan on coding every day for the foreseeable future anyways, so at least I can publicly track it now!
Until Tomorrow!
