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| Photo by Fabian Grohs on Unsplash |
I got through all of freeCodeCamp's Front End Libraries challenges last week. And instead of moving directly onto the projects, I spent a couple of days working my way through 2/3 of a 5 hour React tutorial.
Why?
Why stay on the tutorial treadmill, rather than start tackling the projects?
Because I wasn't at all confident in my knowledge. I did all the React and Redux challenges, sure, but I still hadn't grasped the concepts firmly. I was also fairly certain that it would be worth it to give this tutorial a shot because freeCodeCamp included it on their YouTube page. Another key to making this a useful diversion was that I actually coded alongside most of the video. Which meant it actually took much longer than 2/3 of 5 hours...time well spent. And finally, I was able to put some of the hours I saved from not having a commute last week to good use.
The goals were to build a To-Do List App (par for the course when learning React) and a Meme Generator. The To-Do app ended up being a stub of a project, so there's lot left for me to figure out. Particularly: how to add items to the list, rather than having them be hard-coded at the beginning. And instead of building the Meme Generator, I headed back to freeCodeCamp before completing the full 5 hours.
I ended up building out a Markdown Previewer and deploying it via GH pages! I even used the command line rather than GitHub Desktop and I'm really proud of my progress. It's a simple thing - like a chef knowing how to make a perfectly boiled egg, but it takes guidance and practice despite the apparent simplicity.
I'm looking forward to completing the other Front End Libraries projects and eventually learning the basic concepts of a couple of other popular front-end frameworks: Vue and Angular, in the next few months. My plan is for a follow-up post with my thoughts on how the three compare from a noob's perspective.
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