Start of Phase 2

In my last Mirror post, I talked about having just started to learn React, with my eyes set on the web3con hackathon at the end of the week. Fast forward 21 days and I have since progressed from basic React, began/finished the hackathon working on ecodrips, learned a ton about solidity and the EVM, failed to fully deploy my team’s project, and took a week off to explore Chile. It’s been a little crazy to say the least.

That being said, I am feeling ENERGIZED having taken a short break from coding, CT, and tracking the Developer DAO discord. Here’s a few flics from the last week:

Status Update

I could write a novel about how much I learned from Day 21-34 (I am writing this post on Day 35, having taken 8 days off since Day 34) so will try to focus on the highlights. Days 21-27 were spent on React in preparation for the hackathon, and a multiple-day side quest to complete the next round of the Le Crypto Fellowship process. Like previous weeks, I aimed to learn just enough of the language to be able to read/understand it, and then followed project walkthroughs and tried to build things myself to solidify my knowledge. The best stuff that came out of this week was this React Click Counter app, and this guide for using create-react-app and deploying your project on GitHub pages.

Days 28-34 were spent participating in my very first hackathon and… I worked so much and learned so much it was ridiculous. Didn’t leave my house for about a week, and went from having literally zero Solidity knowledge to successfully deploying my first smart contracts (learning courtesy of cryptozombies, scaffold-eth, and this amazing video by D_D’s very own @thatguyintech). I even made a guide on how to setup Hardhat and interact with smart contracts. By the end of the week I was feeling extremely burned out, but the timing was great as my friend arrived from the US on the final day. The hackathon project I worked on isn’t fully deployed yet (sad), but here’s a link to my first Ethereum related repo, which consists of JS scripts that allow you to interact with Radicle Drips contracts on Rinkeby testnet. Hoping to wrap this project up with the help of @pbillingsby_eth (who completed the entire UI) within the next few weeks.

What’s Next?

Over the last week I realized that upon the completion of the hackathon, I had closed the door on what I think can be described as the “first phase” of my web3 dev learning process. I’ve gone from having zero experience in anything, to having a vague grasp of how the full web3 development stack works. Am I fluent (or proficient) in any of the languages I have worked on so far? Not really, but as I’ve stated before, the goal of this 100 day experiment is to go from no experience to being able to deploy professional level dApps as fast as possible. There are a lot of things I am skipping along the way (most definitely some stuff that I will have to backtrack to later), but I feel like I am doing a decent job of covering the most important bases so far.

I’m happy to share that within one month (ish), I was able to get through the entirety of my initial roadmap, save for Next.js which I didn’t end up learning because it actually serves a different role than I previously understood. This is what my progress looks like today:

Beginner Web3 Dev Competence | Day 1 - 35

• HTML (complete)
• Basic CSS (complete)
• Transfer workflows onto VS Code (complete)
• CSS Flexbox (complete)
• Get set-up on GitHub (complete)
• CSS Grid (complete)
• JavaScript (complete)
• React.js (complete)
• Node.js (complete)
• Solidity (complete)
• Infrastructure needed to deploy dApps (complete)
  • This ended up being Hardhat + Alchemy
• The rest of my life (in progress)

With all of that in the rearview mirror, I am eager to ramp up my technical sophistication. The next chunk of my roadmap is not ordered chronologically like the first chunk, but I hope to gain all of these skills by the end of it. I suspect the actual learning path I take will differ from my initial plan more than the first month, where I pretty much followed it to a T.

Intermediate Web3 Dev Competence | Day 36 - TBD

• Cleaner workflows, better documentation of code, notes on build process, etc.
• CSS frameworks like Tailwind CSS
• React libraries like chakra-UI
• More comfortable incorporating web3 frontend libraries like ethers.js
• Next.js app development/deployment
• Basic usage/comprehension of TypeScript
• Solidity (better understanding of basics + move on to more advanced concepts)
• The Graph (protocol for blockchain indexing + creation of custom blockchain APIs)
• Hardhat development environment fluency
• Interact with pre-existing protocols like Zora, Radicle Drips, and 0xSplits
• Fullstack custom dApps from scratch (planning, creation, testing, and deployment)

During the first 1-2 weeks of this phase I plan to deep dive into the Solidity documentation, finish cryptozombies, complete some/all of speedrunethereum, and work through a few fullstack dApp guides from Nader aka @dabit3 (founder of D_D). From here, I have a couple personal projects I’ve been scheming on for a while, and will finally test my skills by bringing them to life.

Random Thoughts

Although I 100% needed the time-off, I began to feel complacent by the end of my break. I wasn’t initially planning on taking such a long pause just a month into this experiment, but life happens and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to explore with an old friend.

I’m awaiting final word on the status of my Le Crypto Fellowship application. From what I can tell, I made it to the final round where I submitted this video app. The original date set for recipient announcements was March 15th, but it looks like this might be getting pushed back a bit. Still crossing my fingers that this works out, would completely change the trajectory of my life if I am selected.

Lastly, want to note that I am putting some effort into adjusting my work/attention patterns, having had some time to reflect over the past week with the knowledge of what committing full-time to web3 development looks like.

Until next time…