My Web Development Journey

It all started in August 2023, on a fateful day while scrolling through YouTube. I saw a video by Web Dev Simplified titled "Learn React in 40 Minutes."

I had more than 40 minutes of free time, so I clicked on it. That one video changed my life.

NOTE: I ALREADY KNEW HTML, CSS, JAVASCRIPT, AND PYTHON.

I did the usual tutorial follow-along stuff — watched the video, copied him step by step — and by the end of the video, I had a carbon copy of his todo app.

I learnt a lot from that single video — from Virtual DOM to Components to States to Props and so much more.

From past experiences learning other languages and tools, I knew that one project wasn’t enough. So, I deleted everything and started from scratch.

I created my own custom UI using HTML and CSS. Then, using what I learnt from the video, I built all the components from the ground up with no functionality or interactivity.

Next, I used my knowledge of JavaScript plus my newfound understanding of State and Props to add CRUD functionalities to the app.

Just like that, I recreated the entire app myself from scratch using React — the same day I learnt it.

I felt on top of the world. I was so happy that I even created a Git repo and uploaded my codebase to GitHub (something I never did voluntarily).

After that project, I found a repo called 30 Days of React on GitHub and followed along for the next few days. I didn’t have much internet access because of my location at that time, so luckily, I never fell into tutorial hell.

A week later, it was time to build a new project to further enhance my knowledge. I’m an anime/movie lover, so I thought, why not build a movie/anime discovery app?

That led to my next project: Movie Sure.

I built the UI in HTML and CSS, then built the components in React. I already knew how to use APIs in Python, so it wasn’t that hard to implement. Even though the code was messy, it still worked.

Everything was going smoothly until I had to synchronize the search component (which was in the header) with the movie cards (which were in the main components).

As a beginner, I knew nothing about state managers or the Context API, so I did the most beginner thing to do — prop drilling.

I drilled props everywhere I needed data and everything got messy. But at long last, the app was completed — and it works. It still works today… I think.

I was the proudest man on earth. I felt like I could build anything. I was so happy and proud of my newfound skill.

I kept building projects and eventually… I made my first money from programming.

More on that in the next episode — this is getting a bit too long.

Follow me to get notified when the next episode drops.

A huge shoutout to my brother Abubakar Muhammad Muktar for encouraging me and always supporting me. No matter how bad my app looked, he always complimented it and pointed out issues in a calm way.

I love you, bro.

I’ll be making a video version and doing a code review on all the projects on my YouTube channel: https://youtube.com/@ucodes880

Subscribe to get notified when it drops.

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Links to my projects and GitHub:

Portfolio: https://ucodes.vercel.app

GitHub: https://github.com/python-fuse/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ucodes880

Project 1: https://github.com/python-fuse/react_todo_app

Project 2: https://movie-sure.vercel.app