Putting The Pieces Together

For anyone who has read my postings previously, you know that this year is a transition. When I left my old role, my first thought was that jumping back to javascript would be very simple. I knew what it was like in 2014. That was enough, right? Hah! 3 Years out of a technology(as my recruiter confidant told me) was like a death sentence. Code that looked great before would do me no good now.

I enjoy coding. Leaving the field seemed like a mistake. So after some *ahem* challenging interviews, I got back to climbing the mountain that formed while I was stuck in flash. The good news was that the basic structures of coding were still there. The bad news was that the tool set was completely different.

Backbone? old hat. Either you have angular or you're dead to us.

multiple js files in your html? dinosaur.... why aren't you on npm?

regular css? maybe back in the day.... we won't look at you unless you have sass/less

floats? what about flexbox... How can you not know this?

I lived on codeschool while my little one slept. Wes Bos became and continues to be hero of mine. Slowly the interview reasoning for not getting the job changed from:

"You don't know angular.... you're unhirable"

To:

"We really wish you had 2 years+... Sorry, come back when you've worked for someone else. Toodles!" *note: no one has actually said the "toodles" part yet, but give them time*

It has been a year of solid learning of all kinds. I learned how to be a better Dad. I learned 4 different musical instruments as well. I also learned modern full javascript stack. The field is competitive, but I learned from giants in a field that changes every five minutes. Because they shared, I would like to as well. Somewhere out there, someone is stuck and if something I've done helps them, then I'm happy for that.

So I have a gift. It isn't perfect, but it is helpful, at least to me and I hope to you too. I'm taking what I've learned from all those giants, and I'm turning it into template that uses react, redux, scss, npm, webpack, babel, mongo(still pending) etc. It's a work in progress, and I'll share it with who ever needs it. Thanks giants. I'm not one of you yet, but I'll keep pushing.

Cheers and good coding,

Stuart