Today, I am beyond excited. Today, I started building something I had only dreamed about three to four months ago. It’s not a massive project by industry standards, but for me, it feels like a huge achievement.
I began creating a resizable sidebar, the kind you see in VS Code. The idea had been in my mind for months, pushing me every day to try and build it. Today, I finally took the first real steps.
Even though I haven’t completed it yet, I now fully understand how it will work. Every workshop I had studied and every concept I had learned finally started making sense. That feeling of clarity, of “I can do this,” is unbelievably satisfying.
The journey wasn’t easy. Just a few months ago, my toolbox didn’t even have useRef or proper event handling. Today, I used those tools and started implementing the UI myself. I feel proud—proud that I understood the logic and started building it with my own hands.
I wanted to finish the entire UI today and write a full blog about it, but my duty time came. InshaAllah, I’ll complete it tomorrow and share the full walkthrough.
Basically, I’m updating the full UI of an app using CSS Modules, which is why I haven’t posted on dev.to for the last two or three days. But I promise, the update is coming very soon, and I can’t wait to share it with everyone.
For anyone trying to push themselves: start small, start now, and even if you don’t finish today, understanding the workflow and starting implementation is already a massive win.
Top comments (3)
Love this. You can feel the real progress in your words.
Building a resizable sidebar sounds “small” from outside, but when you finally wire up
useRef, events, and see it work like VS Code — that’s a big mindset shift. You’re not just learning concepts anymore, you’re thinking in UI logic.Looking forward to the full walkthrough. These kinds of posts are super helpful for anyone moving from tutorials to actually building things.
Thanks 😊
Love this kind of progress post. That moment when things finally click is huge — looking forward to seeing the finished UI.