First 6 months: Dreams vs Reality

Valentin Vuk — Mon, 07 Mar 2022 09:17:44 +0000

So six months have passed, 350 commits have been made and 147 daily meetings attended...here is a short recap of what I have expected versus what that looked like in reality.

"Well, dreams, they feel real while we're in them right? Its only when we wake up that we realize that something was actually strange." - Cobb

The Code

Like every one of us, I have learned my craft mostly on online tutorials. And there you touch on really wide subjects. In my case, as a react developer, that would be react router, storybook, animation libraries, testing, internalization and concepts like spa, ssg and ssr to name a few. And here is me walking into my first job thinking I will use all those tools daily.

Well, that didn’t work as planned. In reality, the best way to describe how it actually is: you dive in and work much deeper, but with much less tools. And these tools depend on the project that you get assigned. Sometimes it sucks not working with the stuff that you find interesting and engaging, but that is the reality of having a job. On the bright side, there’s plenty of interesting things to learn in the depth of every tool.

"Musn't be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling." - Eames

Scrum is like your mother-in-law, it points out ALL your faults

I imagined my everyday working flow to look something like this: senior developer on the project gives me one detailed task for a week or two, and my communication is solely with him or in rare cases with the backend team - and that’s it.

Ken Schwaber had other ideas. Because of this guy, things called organization, communication, time and task management, planning etc. came into my life. Daily meetings, story points, estimations...whole new world. To this day it is a work in progress, and also - scrum development isn’t particularly student friendly. But as I wrote in the title of this section, it points out all your flaws and gives you something to work on - really important characteristics for your future successful career.

"Look if you want my help, you're gonna have to be completely open with me. I need to know my way around your thoughts better than your wife, better than your therapist, better than anyone." - Cobb

The Squad

Totally expected to work with Richards, Gilfoyles, Jian Yangs characters of the world, sometimes with a bit of Mark Zuckerberg ego on the side. Very hard to engage with, even harder to learn something from them.

I still remember my first few days where I was actually shocked how incredibly brilliant, but also so down to earth and approachable everyone were. From giving me advice, to playing Fifa on lunch breaks and having great time on our "spontaneous" parties. Impressed.

"I got someone better!" - Miles

The Conclusion

In retrospect, it's incredible how much you can be in the wrong with expectations (👋 estimations). Also, our developer community is incredible in real life too, even better, because you have that human touch too. And for my fellow students, I recommend you start exploring jobs, because you learn so so much - not only about the technical stuff, but more importantly, the processes of developing a product, organizational skills and the mindset behind successful programmers and companies.

Land a React Job: The lazy way

Valentin Vuk — Mon, 04 Oct 2021 10:38:18 +0000

Hang on, lads. I've got a great idea.

So you've run out of Netflix TV shows to watch, YouTube algorithm is now showing videos like Man eats 87 SpongeBob stickers in an alley and you learned a little bit about that Facebook JavaScript library while in lockdown?
Then it's time to REACT and land a job so you can buy that AppleTV subscription that will get you fired, but eh, at least it will last few months because they’re kinda killing it lately with movies and tv shows.

I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.
- Bill Gates

Chapter One: El Clásico

You are gonna build ...wait for it...wait...just a little bit... app that fetches list of data and displays it to the user in a nice way. Yeah the classic I know, but the companies really dig it, especially if you use some nice css library and interesting API with it.

Lazy steps:

Go here
Choose a crypto or games & comics API with Auth = NO, HTTPS = YES, CORS = NO (if you're feeling extra productive, you can risk it with unknown)
Follow along this kinda video and just change API specifics to yours
EXTRA: Try out the API you chose with Postman. Just paste the URL into it and it's just enough experience that you can add it to your CV. And you guessed it, the companies really dig it

Chapter Two: Graphs

Take a piece of paper, grab a pen and draw this:

This graph represents principle of Least action on the most complicated equation in the world. But also it's the symbol of our lazy, the least possible action needed mission. So let me introduce you to another graph, GraphQL. It's newer, better, faster and most importantly sounds smart and fancy, query language for APIs. To summarise even more, it replaces REST API.

Lazy steps:

Read and learn this. Probably the most boring part of our mission, but JUST DO IT!
Start a new react project, choose GraphQL API and install Apollo Client
Apollo Client gives your React project the power to use GraphQL queries. useQuery hook is all you need, so learn it here, read to and including Inspecting loading states
This project in itself is the same as the first one, just with different API endpoint and instead of fetch(), we implement useQuery(), so just reuse the logic ;)

Chapter Three: The Next Episode

“The Next Episode” was released as the third single from Dr. Dre’s 2001 and features his frequent Dogg Pound collaborators Snoop Dogg, Nate Dogg and Kurupt. The single peaked at #23 on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart, while achieving platinum status.

Single that will make our status platinum is called Next.js. New, shiny, talented kid on the block, wonderkid, the NEXT big thing. It's the final touch to our mission. It will leave your interviewers speechless. Next.js is a minimalistic framework for server-rendered React applications as well as statically exported React apps. If it sounds complicated, lazy step one will explain all.

Lazy steps:

Watch this video by Fireship
Start a new Next project with yarn (nice bonus touch)
Recreate "Chapter two" project in Next
Go to Vercel and sign up with your GitHub account
In Vercel, click New Project -> Import Git Repository, choose this project and deploy it...yeah, it's that easy :)
EXTRA: Vercel deployment also works with CRA projects, so deploy the rest of them
EXTRA: Enable Vercel analytics for your Next.js project, it's just a click of a button, but hey, you used advanced analytics in your projects ;)

The End

Carl Hanratty: How did you do it, Frank? How did you cheat on the bar exam in Louisiana?
Frank Abagnale Jr.: I didn't cheat. I studied for two weeks and I passed.
- Catch Me If You Can (2002)

Don't lie to yourself, these are the things you now know besides React, HTML and CSS:

npm & yarn
fetch API, test API with Postman
GraphQL data structure and queries, Apollo Client for React, useQuery...
SSG, SSR, Next.js, routing
Vercel, deployment

Go on now, apply for the jobs, get one, earn paycheck or two, buy consuming content and subscription, get fired and repeat the process :)

DEV Community: Valentin Vuk

First 6 months: Dreams vs Reality

The Code

Scrum is like your mother-in-law, it points out ALL your faults

The Squad

The Conclusion

Land a React Job: The lazy way

Hang on, lads. I've got a great idea.

Chapter One: El Clásico

Chapter Two: Graphs

Chapter Three: The Next Episode

The End