My Pandemic Year: A Learning Inventory

Kirsten Lund — Sat, 13 Mar 2021 02:28:47 +0000

One year ago this week, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer declared a state of emergency and... you know the rest.

Naturally, I was marveling - along with everyone else - at how we've been in this situation for an ENTIRE YEAR. It got me thinking about what I've been doing all this time (aside from freaking out). I haven't been binge-watching, baking bread, or bird-watching. (OK, yes - I did see Tiger King, enjoyed lots of #procraftination, and started playing chess). But mainly: I've been programming.

Aside from working on projects, I've been taking classes, writing notes, coding katas, reading blogs, attending online conferences, listening to podcasts, joining discord/slack channels, tuning in to twitch broadcasts and zoom meetups, scrolling through twitter, and on and on.

<< my desktop; wine means it was a Friday night >>

So I decided to do an inventory of ALL THE THINGS. All the learning resources I've been absorbing over the past 12 months. This includes the courses or writing that improved my skills and understanding, listed by instructor, in mostly chronological order. And I can recommend all of them, they are all excellent classes and instructors.

Maximilian Schwarzmuller - Udemy/Academind: NodeJS - The Complete Guide
Bharath Thippireddy - Udemy: Maven
Kathryn Hodge - YouTube: 30 Days of Code (via HackerRank) + LinkedIn Learning
Brad Schiff - Udemy: Wordpress Development
New Horizons - Udemy: D3.js Data Visualization
Daniel Shiffman - YouTube: The Coding Train, Data & APIs in JavaScript
Dan Abramov - Just JavaScript email series
Traversy Media - YouTube/Udemy: JavaScript
Stephen Grider - Udemy: Modern React with Redux
Colt Steele - Udemy: JavaScript Algorithms & Data Structures
Clement Mihailescu - AlgoExpert: Data Structures, Algorithms, Systems Design Fundamentals
Curran Kelleher - YouTube: D3 & Data Visualization
Anjana Vakil - YouTube: Observable
Wes Bos - JavaScript, React, Next.js

Plus so many other people who contribute valuable content that I enjoy and learn from like: Saron Yitbarek, Ali Spittel, Quincy Larson, Scott Hanselman, Cassidy Williams, Colby Fayock, Jason Lengsdorf, Josh Comeau, Joe Karlsson, Randall Kanna, Andrei Neagoie ...

At some point I won't have the extra time anymore to continue consistently taking in this much. So even though it's been an incredibly difficult year all around, I am grateful that I've been able to learn so much. 😅🥳💃💪

Thanks to @icons_8 for making the cover photo available freely on @unsplash 🎁

Yarn -> NPM

Kirsten Lund — Tue, 22 Sep 2020 17:47:04 +0000

Over the course of working on different projects I mistakenly ended up with both Yarn and npm. It was causing me headaches, so I went looking for solutions to convert projects from Yarn to npm. One open-source module I found that has worked great so far is deyarn by MixMax (a B2B SaaS).
npx deyarn and I was good to go.

You can learn more about their journey To Yarn and Back (to npm) Again on their engineering blog where they explain the hows and whys of switching back and forth.

If you have other suggestions, please comment!

Configuring Emmet to include JSX

Kirsten Lund — Fri, 28 Aug 2020 19:47:54 +0000

Today in productivity minutia: I'm taking a React class and since I'm accustomed to Emmet shortcuts, I was getting really frustrated with the extra typing for JSX. A google search and 2 minutes later I got my answer + a bonus tip on images from Burke Holland via Smashing Magazine. 🌟 🙌 (<-- and then I searched "markdown emoji cheatsheet" 😂)

DEV Community: Kirsten Lund

My Pandemic Year: A Learning Inventory

Yarn -> NPM

Configuring Emmet to include JSX