I’ve always been someone that needs to understand everything to be able to grasp a new concept. While I wish I learned differently, I ended up reading a whole lot of books, watching videos and doing outside practice problems throughout the course. If you find yourself looking for extra practice or explanations, here is what worked best for me.
Initially, I struggled with React. The declarative approach along with class components just didn’t make sense. Now, I love React. Here is how I learned the essentials.
1.) Make sure your Javascript is solid before starting React React components are not that different from regular Javascript functions. If you aren’t comfortable passing around functions as values and dealing with objects, you will struggle. A great way to see where you stand is to read Chapter 6 of Eloquent Javascript(https://eloquentjavascript.net/). If you read that chapter and spend a good portion saying something along the lines of “WTF!” in your head, then read the book. It did wonders for me.
While learning to code, there is a ton to learn, and of all of those things, CSS is not all that exciting. That said, a page that has been nicely styled makes you feel a whole lot better about your output. Below are some resources that I found beneficial in moving me along.
I never thought that I would get much use out of learning how to do journal entries and never liked doing them. However, once I started similarly thinking of Redux, the whole thing made a lot more sense.
Redux a state management tool, and tracks state by dispatching actions that are matched within a reducer and return the new state. Likewise, with journal entries, each event is recorded which adjusts the various balances within the general ledger. While ticking most of us off by having to file expense reports etc., these entries enable the bean counters to walk back in time to see what a balance was at a previous date. Redux is the same way.
You don’t have to like accounting, but if you are having trouble getting your head around redux but were forced to eat your dog food in college, this might help you out.
After writing the initial code for my Rails-JS project, I was pretty happy with myself. I’d incorporated fetch, async-await and the application wasn’t breaking. When a friend that has been working professionally with Javascript for five years reviewed my code, my confidence took a hit.