Its been a rough few weeks, with regard to coding. React was harder than I thought it was going to be. I understand the concepts, but for some reason, I’m not able to implement it on my own very capably. I fell behind with projects at Lambda several weeks ago and also ran into a wall with updating my portfolio. Its mostly converted to React and uses switch statements to render components, instead of refreshing the entire screen, but I haven’t puzzled out how to make my projects render programmatically through props – right now, I have the same set of projects rendering for each of the three categories viewers can click on. I think I’m misunderstanding how to set up child components of particular parents. I could just do it in JavaScript with DOM manipulation, but that defeats the purpose of converting it to React and taking advantage of JSX.

My cohort made it through Advanced React and into Advanced State Management. We tackled Context API. the reducer pattern, Redux and Async Redux (along with class components, component lifecycle and methods, testing and more) but I really need to just do it all again. So, I’m taking a 6-week hiatus from Lambda and returning on March 9th, which is my mother’s birthday, so it must be a sign. ;) I’ll be moving from WEBPT10 to WEBPT14. They’ll be starting Intro to React, so I’ll get to do it over – with feeling.

In the meantime, I grabbed Brad Traversy‘s Modern JavaScript From the Beginning and React Front to Back , both on Udemy. The React course was a recommendation from my new TL (team lead) in WEBPT10. My previous TL, Angel, got promoted last week and I think is now a SL (section lead). When I spoke with my new one, Wes, he told me about his challenges with React (he took it twice too, but it was because his entire cohort was allowed to repeat it since they learned class components and the React team had just released Hooks, which were then incorporated into Lambda’s curriculum). He said that on hindsight, he should have just flexed, but he pushed through and made it out with an incomplete understanding. Taking it again really helped him, and now he’s actually going through it a 3rd time, because he’s doing the material as we get it, so he can help us with projects, as needed – well, not me, anymore, since I’m on hiatus, but I can always reach out to him if necessary.

Anyway, Wes recommended the React course because it goes over just about all of React. It includes projects built using class components, and then converts them to hooks, which really solidifies the process and differentiates the technologies. I also like Traversy quite a bit. I watch his channel a lot, along with some other developer-focused channels on YouTube. When I went to Udemy and grabbed the React course, I took a quick look at his other courses and decided to grab the JavaScript one as well, because my JavaScript is not very strong yet. Its all vanilla JS, so my hope is that I come out the other side of this with a much more practical understanding of it than I currently have.

In other news. the cancer charity that I had created a website for, which was then eschewed by their web person in favor of the WordPress site they were using, got back to me over the weekend. They’ve made some changes to the organization, adding personnel and removing others. One of the people who left was their web person, and the founder expressed again that she really wants to go with my design. We messaged a little over the weekend and I told her that I’d resume work on it this week, but that I’m also balancing the bootcamp and some other projects.

So, that’s on my plate. I intend to rewrite it using React. Right now, its just HTML/LESS and a touch of JS for the menu. I also took on a project that I found I wasn’t ready for. I started creating a timesheet for my wife’s department at her job. They’re still using paper. However, I found that my lack of backend/database knowledge makes it impossible for me to complete. I thought I’d just load employee info using an array, but then I realized that the users wouldn’t be able to actually enter and save their hours, so its back-burnered for a bit. I also want to rebuild the websites that we use at work for our corporate page and for the application’s page, since I know more than Front Page and Expression Web now. I actually remade the landing page for the applications a few months ago and made it responsive. I never completed the rest of the site though. And, I want to rebuild at least part of the website for my tech support company. Right now, its entirely a WordPress site. If I can get these done, its essentially four real-world projects I can add to my portfolio. We’ll see what happens though. My main focus right now is completing those two Udemy courses.

Oh, and my 7-year old has started teaching her classmates how to use Scratch. ;) She wants me to show her HTML/CSS and teach her how to blog, and start a YouTube channel. There’s so much going on, and not enough hours in a day…