An online book club.. for developers?

Janique-ka John — Sat, 08 Feb 2020 09:38:29 +0000

I am a software engineer, mostly working in the backend of a desktop application. Although I don't use JS in my daily tasks at work, I've been using it a lot recently as part of my side projects, such as a twitter bot, and through React Native for an app I am developing.

A LOT has changed since I was first introduced to JS during my bachelor's in 2011, and as a result all on my own I was slowly following videos and courses to fill in the gaps. That is, until one day, I was casually scrolling #TechTwitter and saw a tweet by @madisonkanna, talking about a coding book club(@codebookclub)! I immediately jumped on their discord, and what a GREAT community!!

We are now on Chapter 3 of the book You Don't Know JS: Get Started, and we started by reading it for free on Github(https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS). Last week we had the absolute pleasure of being joined by the author himself, and he gave all in attendance free ebook copies of his book! At the risk of sounding cliche, I have to say that despite thinking I "knew" Javascript, I gained a much deeper insight from reading this book!

Settling Debates

It was an amazing experience to be able to talk to the author directly, especially knowing he has so many years of experience. While we were supposed to originally speak to him for half an hour and then continue meeting. We all were having such great insight from Kyle that he ended up agreeing to stay the entire hour! It was amazing. In one of our groups we had a discussion about whether or not Javascript really is compiled and if we think that's what kyle really meant to say. Well here was my chance to ask him face to face. Conclusion: He meant what he meant and he said what he said. Javascript is a compiled language. Debate settled!

Symmathesy

One of the biggest benefits for me being apart of the code book club is the sense of community and frankly - peer pressure to continue reading the book every week! Knowing that I had book club coming up on Sunday really made me read and try to understand the chapter before the end of the week. In my own I definitely would not have felt the pressure to continue the way that I did. In addition to that, discussing what we learned together and answering questions and asking questions also help a lot of the material we covered really stick. Kyle brought to our attention that there is actually a word for this style of learning! - Symmathesy.

Conclusion

It has definitely been a positive experience with the codebookclub and it feels amazing to have such a rapport with an online community! Since the inception of the @codebookclub I've had such a positive experience and have been feeding my hunger to learn more! Looking forward to see where we go with this awesome community!

Lessons after 1 Week with React Native

Janique-ka John — Sun, 03 Nov 2019 21:04:15 +0000

React Native seemed like the best choice for me as I prototype an app. The one thing standing in my way was the fact that.... I have never used React.

Still, it seemed like a waste of time to first try to learn React, which I had no opportunity to use, and THEN apply what I've learnt to React Native... long story short, seven days later I feel like I'm getting the hang of things.

Lesson #1 - React Native is not a web wrapper

If you have heard of or used Cordova (I actually used this technology to make a few apps back when I was in Uni), React Native is not it. The javascript itself is not being wrapped in some shell and displayed on android/iOS! The code you write in React Native is translated to actual native code. To further emphasize this, you can chose to stop using react native and continue in your native language of choice instead. Which leads me to lesson 2...

Lesson #2 - Code with your platform(s) of choice in mind

As I alluded to above, development in react native translates to native, platform specific code. For this reason I've found it useful to focus on the platform I'm aiming for. For now, I am focusing on iOS and learning about CocoaPods, and all of the specific actions Apple requires to get successful build. (Bonus tip, ensure that you open the .xcworkspace version of your app in XCode)

Lesson #3 - Restart and refresh your simulator

You know the old adage... Have you tried turning it on and off again?

If you are depending on the feedback from the simulator to see how you are going, I encourage you to regularly close and restart your bundler process and your simulator (sometimes even delete the app from the simulator). I can't tell you how much time I lost initially, trying to clear or find the solution to errors that were simply to be solved by giving the setup a refresh.

For iOS development - pod deintegrate, then pod install (cd into the iOS folder first) has solved many an issue.

Lesson #4 - Linking - sometimes it's automatic, sometimes it's not

At a time before my start with React Native, you had to link dependencies yourself. Nowadays, the React Native CLI auto-links, but not for every dependency! Some have yet to switch over, and so I encourage you to read the docs of your new module carefully to see if you have to run react-native link dependency-name in order to add the modules.

P.S Overall this has been fun, so much fun that I could barely put it down to stop and reflect on the lessons for this week. Let me know if I should continue sharing my newbie perspective and visit my twitter page @JaniquekaJohn for more frustration, random tweets and OMG It Works! moments as I continue on this journey.

P.S.S I am also learning things about react through learning React Native, during this journey, such as the component lifecycle (which is actually about to change from your typical componentWillMount etc) Let me know if I should write about learning React through React Native!

DEV Community: Janique-ka John

An online book club.. for developers?

Lessons after 1 Week with React Native