Still Going Strong

Officially 20% of the way through this experiment, days are flying by and I’m learning a ton. This is how I would describe the current vibes:

Status Update

The last 10 days were defined by moving out of HTML/CSS land and taking my first steps with JavaScript. I had been told that this is where things were gonna start getting hard, and unfortunately people were not exaggerating.

Going into this, I was unaware of the difference between HTML/CSS and what languages like JavaScript are designed to handle. HTML/CSS are used to format and style your webpage but aren’t equipped for enabling custom user interactions or handling data. JavaScript is a language that allows for full algorithmic scripting, meaning that you can write code that enables task automation, data indexing, and more. The possibilities with it seem pretty endless, so needless to say the learning curve has been much steeper than it was for HTML/CSS.

That being said, after the first 3-5 days working through the FreeCodeCamp course and beginning my first projects, I started to feel comfortable both writing my own scripts, as well as reading/understanding code from others online.

I built a bunch of random stuff that you can see on my GitHub profile, but the coolest was a program that tracks how much time has elapsed since I quit my 9-5, and a YouTube randomizer app.

What’s Next?

As I write this, I am “finished” with JavaScript and will be starting with React tomorrow. To be clear, my understanding of JavaScript is EXTREMELY limited, but the purpose of this whole experiment is for me to progress to deploying dApps as fast as possible. I will be moving on with what I believe is enough competence to not be completely lost as things get more complex. As always you can check out this page for a more detailed view of my progress. This is where my roadmap stands as of today:

• 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
• Node.js / Next.js
• Solidity
• Infrastructure needed to deploy dApps
• The rest of my life

Over the next 10 days I plan to develop a basic understanding of React and will start messing around with Solidity. This is the point where I think this experiment is gonna start feeling real…

Random Thoughts

The hackathon for web3con (virtual web3 conference being hosted by Developer DAO) begins on February 28th which will occur during this upcoming 10 day chunk. I’m in the process of putting together a small team of people to build a basic project for that, feel free to reach out if you’d be interested in collaborating!

Last thing, I submitted an application to a very interesting web3 fellowship program called Le Crypto Fellowship. Accepted applicants receive €100k to fund a year of learning/building in web3 in exchange for 7% of their first company. Fingers crossed.