From Hacking in HotDog to Developing in React
I have a long-running love/hate relationship with making web sites: I created my first site in 1996, using a combination of NotePad, HotDog, and Adobe PageMill for my HTML editors. Luckily the Internet Archive has a snapshot of one of my early sites, circa August 1999. It looked pretty snazzy on Netscape Navigator…look it up.
In the 20+ years since, I have continued to learn and work with web technology on both personal and professional projects. Between 2013 and 2016 I had a membership to Team Treehouse and completed both the Web Design and Web Developer tracks. Those two courses gave me a formal education in what I had until then mostly hacked through trial and error. Since 2016, I have used my knowledge of web design and CSS on documentation-related projects for work and, unfortunately, spent less time working with JavaScript.
Three years is a long time in terms of web development technologies. One way I try to remain current is by listening to Syntax, a web development podcast hosted by Wes Bos and Scott Tolinski. At the end of 2018 I was itching to try something new and decided I would focus on strengthening my JavaScript skills by investing in a Pro membership on Scott Tolinski’s Level Up Tutorials learning platform for the new year.
I set an initial goal of learning React and Gatsby as part of my plan to replace my web site’s current Jekyll-based build stack with more modern technologies. Not sure which course to start with, I joined the Level Up Tutorials Slack channel and asked the community for help. The members were very welcoming and someone suggested the React 16 for Everyone course because it presents concepts that are fundamental to getting started with Gatsby.
With a course identified, I took took advantage of one of the Pro membership features and downloaded the entire set of course videos and code samples so I wouldn’t have to rely on the public WiFi at my local coffee shop where I planned to work on the course during my lunch hour.
The React 16 for Everyone Course
The React 16 for Everyone course comprises 23 high quality videos, running between four and 20 minutes long, depending on the topic. Tolinski provides info on setting up React-specific configurations for both the dev environment and browser extensions which I found very helpful. Once set up, he jumps right into a project: creating a movie database site using a third-party API. Now this was exciting because it was the first time I had taken a web dev course that connected to an API. The only snag was that I was working offline as mentioned above. In the end it was not a big deal because the public WiFi was good enough to hit the API once in a while. Also, and perhaps most importantly, I quickly saw the value of Tolinski using that API as it allowed me to focus on learning React without the headache of setting up a local data source.
Impressions
Tolinski does a nice job with the pacing of the material, establishing a good foundation for the concepts, then building on them as the course progresses. I never felt rushed through any parts or that I was missing something along the way. His presentation style is friendly and approachable: he greets learners with a quick overview of what you’ll learn, then jumps into the code. He occasionally switches windows to show the expected results, then moves on. This consistency was helpful given how I often only had enough time for one lesson a day, I knew where I was starting and leaving off. On the few occasions that I had time to complete a couple of lessons back-to-back, I didn’t find myself getting annoyed by a lot of repetition.
The Verdict
I would recommend this course for everyone who has experience writing JavaScript and wants to jump into React. I would not recommend this course for JavaScript newbies. I think that without that foundation, I might have been able to complete the course, but I doubt it’s likely I would be able to understand or retain enough to efficiently apply it to a real-world project without a lot of extra effort.
Next Steps
I am going to continue with Level 2 React, then move on to Styled Components and Gatsby. I may squeeze in another round of Computer Vision playing Cat Detective in the interim.