This is my first real post on Dev.to! Halloween seems like a great day to do something spook-ily out of the ordinary and to shake things up, so I want to use it to announce that I will be starting my 100 days of code with the intention of landing a job during the challenge. For me, that means landing a full-time front-end oriented job using React on or before February 10th, 2021.
Background
I am a 29 year old web developer interning at a digital agency in New York City, one of the world's hottest job markets for devs, including front-end devs. Last year I moved here to attend a bootcamp and to land a job, so after the bootcamp, self-study, and finally, working as a front-end intern, this is the final step in that plan. I've chosen front-end instead of backend because although I love development in general, the most fun part for me is interacting with users and bringing great designs to life. I also happen to really like CSS- an apparently rare trait among coders.
The Goal
Specifically, I am shooting for a full-time position at a company or at least a division here in New York. Covid makes things weird, so the job might be remote at first, but I do love working with a team in person so the hope is that after the pandemic settles down, I'll be getting on the subway to head into the office. Other specifics:
- The job should use React, a framework I have loved learning that is a highly transferrable skill
- The salary should be competitive for bootcamp grads in the area
- The product we're building should be something I connect with so that it's something I really believe in working on, since everyone knows the first year for a full-time developer is no cakewalk
Daily Expectations
This actually isn't my first time trying a 100 days challenge. Earlier this year I tried a vanilla JS and web-dev challenge, and even bought a domain for it. So I know it can be really easy to fall off the horse, especially if you over-extend yourself. This time around each project has to be built in React. Here are the expectations:
- Each day I will create a project in React JS of any size
- Each project will have a github repo
- Each day I will post a blog post about the project and the intention for the project here on Dev.to and share both the blog post and the github link on my Twitter @jwhubert91 and my Linkedin. I'm new to Twitter but there's a thriving dev community there so now's as good of a time to start as any. Each week I will also share the 7 projects I worked on in a single post on Instagram, where my social circle is more active and I already have a few followers.
- In my off-time, I will also study interview questions 25 minutes per day- or 1 pomodoro
That's it! I've already tweeted that I'm starting. So that means I owe y'all a first project by EoD. Better get to work!
Top comments (18)
I'm learning React too, it's not easy (And have been to NY 3 times and love it!)
Hey David - I subscribed to Scrimba a few months ago and have found it to be the best resource on the internet, by far. There is a "Learn React for Free" course that teaches the basics to try it out. There is also a React bootcamp course that I'm taking on next. Do you have a favorite resource?
I like watching videos, typically on YouTube, rather than reading. When I find something that is good I bookmark it so I have a bunch of React stuff bookmarked. Ive kind of got the basics now I think, just trying to learn 1 important technique each day and also converting my .net MVC site to React with a .net Core Rest backend which is going well.
youtube.com/watch?v=TjnyFNxQ67Y is one of the best ones for me
The rest of my bookmarks are below
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/React_(web_f...
youtube.com/watch?v=VbQj2dDsAHY&fe...
stackoverflow.com/questions/564214...
youtube.com/watch?v=TjnyFNxQ67Y
reactjs.org/docs/composition-vs-in...
stackoverflow.com/questions/399679...
stackoverflow.com/questions/451726...
upmostly.com/tutorials/react-oncli...
reactjs.org/blog/2015/09/02/new-re...
codeinwp.com/blog/react-ui-compone...
material-ui.com
medium.com/quick-code/react-quick-...
youtube.com/watch?v=KJE4LtAxLEw
youtube.com/watch?v=hQAHSlTtcmY&t=...
youtube.com/watch?v=Ke90Tje7VS0
youtube.com/watch?v=Law7wfdg_ls
youtube.com/watch?v=vu_rIMPROoQ
reactjs.org/docs/components-and-pr...
youtube.com/watch?v=T3Px88x_PsA
youtube.com/watch?v=wwl6iH5D0LU
youtube.com/watch?v=fcMNZ7j4JSg
reactrouter.com/web/api/Link
youtube.com/watch?v=Y0-qdp-XBJg&t=...
medium.com/swlh/how-to-add-multipl...
Wow! This is an excellent list of resources. I will definitely look into some of these, particularly some of the more in-depth JS things I'm probably getting rusty on. I probably need to see the React under-the-hood video- there is so much going on behind the scenes that I don't quite get yet. Thanks for sharing!
Welcome
The under the hood one is excellent. I have been a full stack developer for 21 years so need to understand how things work!
Good luck!
Thanks! Another New Yorker! :)
Yea man!🗽
Best of luck to you on your journey! A new project a day is a big commitment for sure! What if you get engrossed with an idea and want to spend more time on it, rather than just a day?
Thanks Sam! I've read a bunch of posts and articles about the 100 days challenge and it's definitely a trade-off being able to do a project each day between quality and quantity. Some days it will be a really well put together project and others you will just have time to focus on a core point and maybe leave other aspects for the next day's project.
For example, I meant to publish a to-do app today using sessionStorage for my db but I spent a long time on styling and am not quite sure yet how I want to structure the getter and setter within the app. It's getting too late and I don't want to deal with it right now. So I'm pushing that off 'til tomorrow and instead whipped up a little project comparing Moment.js and the built-in JS Date object within a React project.
There are definitely 3-5 large MERN stack projects I want to make during this challenge that I'll probably make over the course of several days in the background and have some shorter stand-in projects to do each day during those longer pursuits. You can also always go back to a previous day's project if you have some free time to make tweaks or want to improve upon it.
The short time window forces you to emphasize practice, and the ancient principle of "Done is better than perfect".
Awesome <3 keep going!
One Question: How do you pick projects? is there a list or something?
Thanks Muhammad :)
There's no list. I am learning React in my own time using Udemy, Scrimba and other courses so usually a project pops into mind based on whatever I've been studying. Sometimes I just focus on a concept I don't understand and make something that uses that concept. Last week I did steal a couple of ideas from here though: dunebook.com/react-project-ideas-f...
Good luck React is fun to use once you understand the syntax.
I'm really enjoying it so far.
Thank you.
I think that will be helpful I'm learning React too :)
Good luck man!
Thanks Anand!
I’ll follow you in that adventure. :-)