3 Web Development Projects | Full-Stack Struggles #3

What you'll learn in this episode

• What to do when you're struggling to learn web development, specifically when you've taken on too much at once
• How to re-focus your learning if you feel like you're not progressing
• What's next for the full-stack struggles series

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Topics

The Struggle So Far

• Was trying to make a passive income tracker using Svelte and SvelteKit to get experience with frontend and backend tech
• Problems:
  - Whenever I went to work on the app I was immediately Googling things trying to figure out my next move
  -- Rusty at JS
  -- Working on multiple projects across different technologies
  -- Beginner at Svelte and SvelteKit
  -- Long absences from the project
  - Not knowing Svelte, SvelteKit, modern JS methodologies had me second guessing what code came from where (where are the borders?)
  - I know how to architect the entire app in theory (pseudo-code) but my planning overwhelms my syntax and “in-practice” knowledge 
• Essentially I feel like I’ve learned too little so far, despite my off-and-on absences from the project

Assessment of Learning

• This is a learning project, I want to further my knowledge
• Since I know vanilla HTML, CSS, JS - Svelte (not SvelteKit) is the natural next step as the frontend component of the Svelte/Kit combo
• My goal throughout this has been to learn Svelte/Kit and make the passive income tracker, but my focus was eaten up by the passive income tracker app
• My goal and focus has switched to learning:
  - Svelte + JS (knowledge upgrade)
  - SvelteKit
  - Passive Income Tracker (final project w/ my newfound knowledge)
• Learning path forward:
  - Building a smaller projects that someone has built before 
  - Use a comprehensive guide on the projects from start to finish
  - Add my own twist to practice my knowledge
• Inspired by social media (partially by Danny Thompson)
  - Speaking to how a lot of YT videos show a cool app to make “for beginners”  but the projects are often too difficult or not as valuable as something simple as a to-do app
  - The goal with learning projects are the mechanisms and methodologies that you’re practicing….not that you’re making a “cool app”

Three Projects

• Efficient grocery list app 
  - Like app: to-do app
  - Features:
  -- Create items
  -- Organize their order
  -- Organize them into groups by department 
  -- The idea is to order your groceries as they appear in your path through the store to prevent backtracking (I already do this with MS todo with no department grouping, just task ordering)
  -- Save lists to localstorage
  -- When re-adding items for the next week’s note, remembers the previous department it was added to last time
  - [TBA] API grabbing app (SvelteKit focus)
  - Passive Income Tracker
• By completing several smaller projects, the goal is more attainable, and I’ll essentially have 3 portfolio projects at the end of full-stack struggles

To-Do Svelte Project

Starting point tutorial

Source: Your First Svelte Project: A Todo List App | TypeOfNaN

• Tutorial outlined:
  - Components
  - Props
  - Keyed lists
• Status
  - Flew through the tutorial
  - Working on adding my unique twist to it
  - Designing the new layout and how I want things to work/look (will share on socials)
  - Then continue work on it until completion (shouldn't be long)

Comments and Feedback

• Project ideas for the API project
• Feedback on this new approach
  - Do you think this is more attainable?
  - Is this giving up and starting over? (Community Question)
  - Once these other two projects are done, should I continue where I left off on the last one? Or should I restart with my new knowledge?

Links

• ‍Michael LaRocca
  - Author of the Self-Taught the X Generation blog, at selftaughttxg.com