Switching Gears

I left off feeling a little lost in the world of React. My assumption at that point was that my JavaScript skills just weren't good enough. To a large extent, I believe this to be true. At the same time, I think I could have advanced my skills in React pretty quickly by doing some projects on my own. However, my JavaScript would still be lacking, and it would have taken me much longer to figure it out. I needed something else. I looked outside Udemy to find something that might help me. I found two different resources that seemed to have a little more concentration on the JavaScript ecosystem: Frontend Masters and Egghead. I ended up choosing to go with Frontend Masters because I didn't like the pacing of the courses on Egghead; they seemed to short and the speed at which they taught seemed way too fast. Frontend Masters had a sort of curriculum to follow that took you from beginner through expert. There were also a ton of courses you could take outside of these tracks, so I thought this could take me pretty far. It cost $39 a month, which isn't exactly cheap, so I wanted to take full advantage of this resource. Luckily, at this point, my dedication was fully trained and I was able to put in a lot of hours studying.

I started off with a sort of general course on web development by Brian Holt. It was ok, but it didn't wow me. Then, I think I took a course on JavaScript by Bianca Gandolfino. This one was pretty good, but again, it wasn't life-changing. Then I got to the Kyle Simpson courses. I had started to read some of his books, You Don't Know JS, and they were really confusing to me. I found his courses to be just as confusing, and I kind of got the feeling he was talking down to the audience. I know he's incredibly smart and really knows his stuff when it comes to JavaScript, but I wasn't thrilled with his courses. I was starting to lose hope with Frontend Masters, but I was determined to keep going. Someone on Twitter, a friend named Matt, suggested I give Will Sentance's courses. One of them was coming up in the track I was pursuing, so I decided to give it a try. This was the life-changing moment I was waiting for. Not only was his teaching style captivating, the content was phenomenal. For the first time since I started, I finally felt like it was starting to click. I still didn't know everything, nor do I now, not by a long shot, but I was able to get to a proficient level. He had 4 courses on Frontend Masters to take, and I took them all as fast as I could. Then, I watched them again. This was it.

One of the tenets of his teaching is pair programming. I always felt pretty self-conscious about my skills in programming, and rightfully so, but my friend Matt suggested we give it a try. It was way outside my comfort zone, but I did it anyways because I knew it was going to help me out. It turns out that Matt was way advanced from where I was, but he was so patient with me. He introduced me to CodeWars and we started working through some problems, once every week. After a while, I could tell I was really progressing, and I had made a nice friend in the process. We kept going for a month or two, but eventually he got a really nice job, and we parted ways. I haven't spoken to him since then, but I hope he's doing well. I can't thank him enough for bringing me up and giving me his time when I really needed it. This portion of my journey was, I think, the most instrumental in moving me forward in my journey. This takes us to about late October of last year, 2019. Something else pretty life-changing happened right about then. On November 7th, I was backing up a golf cart at my job and caught my leg in between the cart and a pole, breaking both my fibula and tibia. Luckily, I didn't have to have surgery, which, given the severity of the break, was a complete miracle. However, I wasn't able to work for some time. In my next installment, I'll take you through the month I had at home while my leg was healing and how I capitalized on this time.

Until tomorrow!