Collin Pfeifer, writer, software engineer, and student at Indiana University joins the React Round Up panel to discuss the intricacies and pitfalls in Create React App, the roadmap of being a self-taught developer, and how the computer education system has changed over the years.

Hey everybody and welcome to another episode of React Roundup. I am your host today, TJ Vantolle, and with me on the panel, I have Jack Harrington.

 

Hello.

 

And our special guest today, we have Colin Pfeiffer. Colin, welcome to React Roundup.

 

Hi, nice to be here.

 

Cool, well, Colin, maybe you could start by just telling us a little bit about who you are, what you do, why you're famous, all those good sorts of things.

 

Well, I'm a student. I'm currently studying psychology and computer science and I'm a self-taught developer. I've been coding for about five, six years and I love computer science. I love the programming aspect and the problem solving behind it. And it's been a passion of mine and I love writing about it. So it's probably where you've seen me most on Medium, but yeah, that's my background in it.

 

Excellent. Yeah, because I know we, I do want to chat. I'm very curious about what computer science education is like today and being a self-taught developer. So we're going to get to that. But you did mention that you have been writing and that's why we reached out because you wrote an article about why create react app is outdated in 2022, which is, and you've got a talent for writing. That's a nice, like controversial, like,

 

Ha ha!

 

uh, you know, attention grabbing attention grabbing titles. So. Maybe you could start by telling our audience like the short version, the cliff notes of that. Why is Create React app outdated?

 

Well, I personally think Create React app is outdated because when I was first learning React, it was the way that I was taught. Like, you know, it was the way that you just bundled everything together into a single file and it ran, you know, and that's how it was. And so looking back on that now, after learning through some of more advanced concepts of React, and seeing those different frameworks like Next.js and Gatsby and seeing how they decouple some of those internal tools, it made a lot more sense to me to just show it like beginning off. Like why would you, it's like take Python and C++, like Python internalizes pointers and a lot of those things compared to C++ yet lets the programmer do it themselves. And so I think... I think personally letting people learn that themselves first off is a way better thing than internalizing it to begin with.

 

Yeah, it's interesting. I remember the first time I used create react app, your first thought is like, wow, this is magic. Like how is this actually working? But then I also remember they, there's a process in create react app where you can essentially like jailbreak or what

 

Yeah,

 

I

 

eject.

 

eject eject

 

Eject!

 

Yeah.

 

is the right term you eject. And you're like, oh, okay. That like your first thought is like, oh, that gives me some peace of mind, right? I can always get out of this. But then when you do eject, you get to see what. Create React is actually doing. And

 

Yeah.

 

all of a

 

Yeah.

 

sudden there's like all these files and there's like this webpack file that looks like it's just, you know, it's just chaos. It's like thousands

 

Oh yeah.

 

of thousands of lines of code. And it also gives you reservations like, man, I'm like, depending on this, right? For my production workflow. And so it's always been an interesting trade off for me where it's like, yes, there's a lot of power with Create React app, but you're also relying on a whole lot of... magic for your applications.

 

Oh yeah, I totally agree. So I think getting rid of that magic is a good first step in being able to figure out what's underneath the hood.

 

So what does that mean though? So if I'm just random developer, I mean normally you basically got two choices. You've got Create React app or let's face it Next.js. I mean

 

Yeah.

 

you could throw like Redwood and remix in there too. But that's really, so what are you proposing then? Or do you just roll your own I suppose?

 

I mean, I'm proposing at least learning how to, if using Create React app, at least figuring out what's underneath the hood.

 

Sure. Okay.

 

My next step after using Create React app was just trying to, I built my own webpack bundler and trying to figure out like, you know, what's going on underneath, like trying to see like what's happening behind the scenes, like what's making this work. And I think Next.js does a way better job of that than Create React app does, so. That's why I would push it.

 

Hmm.

 

It's definitely interesting to pull back. Like it's, it's a, it's a sort of classical tech technological thing where sometimes if you can pull back the veil on the tech you're using, cause even if you, even if you ultimately decide to come back to create react app that knowing a little bit more about how your code is bundled and how those technologies work can just come in handy because I just little things like you'll understand error messages better, you'll

 

Hmm.

 

understand what's happening during your build. You'll have some more flexibility later on because it's sort of inevitably, you can't escape bundlers. If you're a front end developer, you might want to escape bundlers. I certainly do, but you like just knowing how these things work has value just sort of in and of itself.

 

Mm-hmm. I think that's what gets lost in using Create and React app. Like, just assuming that the magic is just going to take care of it all on its own and not really seeing what's going to be happening underneath the hood. And so, I mean, if that's not going to happen right away, then I think it's definitely something to be brought back on and try and figure it out on your own.

 

Yeah, you definitely get a sense when you create, when you eject about how much they put in for DX. There's a ton in there. I mean, all

 

Mm-hmm.

 

the hot module, your loading configurations and everything else. I mean, that, you know, there's a lot of tricky work in there. And then there's a lot of like asset management stuff. Like if you're bringing in SVGs and all of, you know, and CSS and how that's handled.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

There's just a

 

Yeah.

 

ton of different configuration around that. Which, you know, I mean, in the case of like the asset stuff, that might be something you'd look for as you're making something for non-production. But the DX stuff, it was nice, but not necessarily, you don't need to have it. Although man, developing a god is a pain in the butt.

 

Yeah.

 

Yeah, I still like, I very much, I still use Create React app all the time. And I think for anything like quick and dirty, like where you don't want to get into the nitty gritty, it's absolutely amazing for stuff like that. Like I need a demo, I need a prototype, I need to see if this is gonna work. I need to put something out there. At that point, I very much do not wanna care about bundling. I very much want to just focus on my problem I'm trying to solve and put that all in the background. So in those cases, Create React app is a slam dunk. Where I think it gets trickier is the more like, I'd say like advanced sort of customized, like if you're building an app for the real long term and you have some real big enterprise case, like a big enterprise app that's going to be around for a while, those are the cases where having something more custom and fine tuned. and something that's not as heavy becomes a lot more important, at least in my mind.

 

No, yeah, I totally agree. I think something quick and dirty like that, create or act at makes sense, but I think it was being pushed more to like beginners and just like everybody in general when really it should be used just to like, as you said, an MVP or something really quick.

 

Yeah, you know, I forgot VEET. VEET's also really great for this stuff. And it's so fast. Have you tried it?

 

No, I have not.

 

Oh, it's excellent. Yeah, you should give it a go. I mean, it is boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, to bring up. V-I-T, not

 

Gotcha.

 

B-E-E-T. It's like the French way of saying it. VEET. For life. It comes out of the VIEWCREW, but it's actually works for like, REACTS, FELD, PREACT, whatever. solid.

 

Oh yeah, I mean, oh, sorry. I was going to say that like with, with those things, like bundling to HTML files is usually the way that I would want to

 

Yeah.

 

go. Like, like doing like something like that instead of, um, bundling to like JS and then doing like going through that extra layer of, of, of, um, interpretation is just not worth it in my opinion.

 

So you mentioned earlier that you thought Next sort of does it better. So could you maybe dig into that a little bit? Because to me, Next is probably the biggest, that's what we use for our production codebases. And I will say that it feels very similar to create React app and that it's basically magic, right? Like

 

Haha

 

I have no... I couldn't even tell you what technology it's using under the hood to make my app magically appear and dev or what I mean, run dev or whatever, right? So I'm curious in your in your mind, like what makes next different? Why you think it sort of does the job better?

 

Well, yeah, in my opinion, I think their addition of directly being able to work with like their own internal server with API calls and their way of working with internal tools such as headers and page management and stuff like that makes it a much better thing than having to, you know, use a react router or having to use helmet and stuff like that, where it's like it's already built in. But they do it in such a way that it makes sense for the average developer to use. And I like their way they like they bundled HTML, they have SCSS built in, like stuff like that. It's just like, why do you not have that? Like what's

 

Hehehehehehehehehe

 

stopping you from putting the good stuff in? So it's like, I'm just confused. Like, I just, I don't know, but that's why I've always pushed for Next.js or even Gatsby, like Gatsby's environment and their community that they have behind.

 

Thanks for watching!

 

Even like their CMS support that they have for like WordPress, it's insane. Like that is the, that is the way that to bundle to HTML and CSS. So I think, I think those two would be better in my opinion.

 

It's interesting because Next is also fairly heavy in a sense, but they sort of have opinionated decisions. So, whereas Create React app sort of tries to support everything, right? It's kind of intended for like, you could bring in your TypeScript if you want, or the CSS modules if you want, right? It supports all these different workflows. And Next is just more, just puts you on this path, right? You're going to build your apps. sort of this way, this is how you're gonna do routing. And sure, you can customize it a little bit, but it seems to be more opinionated. And if you like those opinions, it makes it a pretty appealing way to build apps.

 

Yeah, I think that's honestly kind of an issue. Like with front end, like there really is no, like if you look up like, how do you make a React component? There's like 10 different answers. Like there isn't really like one most efficient, best way to do it. And so I think having those scaffolding, like having those opinions, having that way of, you know, saying this is the way that we think is best is a great way for people to start out and be able to get a sense of how to build an app in their own way. And gain a way towards being a more efficient React developer.

 

Yeah, there's definitely been a bunch of transitions over the years. And I think that's when you look back through like a Stack Overflow or you're getting hints from GitHub Copilot, which is basically feeding off of that. And also, you know, get up, you're basically getting a whole bunch of like, Oh, this was, this is classic components. And you're like, Oh, what, you know, should I use that? Should I not use that? I don't know. If you're just

 

Mm-hmm.

 

coming into it from the outside. It's like, no, no, no, you should be using functional components all the time, 100% nowadays. But

 

Yeah.

 

you know, like there's just all that information out there and it's hard to know which one's the right way to go. And I think, yeah, you're right. Next. It's pretty, it's pretty modern in that sense, you know, the way that they have have done everything up in the like next day's routine is very, very modern. It's cool. And they keep it up to date.

 

Oh yeah, yeah.

 

Yeah, but keeping it up to date is interesting because that's one factor that has held true for the 20-ish years I've been in front end development is you always want to trust whatever you're building with. And I think one thing new to that equation, or trust that it's going to stick around and be updated and whatever. And the thing about Next is it has however many millions of dollars they've raised in venture funding and

 

Ha

 

whatnot

 

ha.

 

that is kind of a strange... thing to enter the front end world, but at the same time, it gives you confidence that they have the money and the incentive to keep that thing around, to keep it updated, to add new features. So it's weird because it makes it more of a solid pick because of that.

 

Yeah, I think having the money backing it and it being open source are two great things that make it a really

 

Yeah.

 

good tool.

 

It's also funny that like create react app seemed like it seems like it's such a thing. I mean, it comes out of the react team. I think of it originally,

 

Yeah,

 

maybe still

 

Mm-hmm.

 

I

 

does.

 

think, yeah.

 

And, but you look at next JS, at least with 13 and you're getting things like react server components and stuff like that. That's like the bleeding edge. And

 

Yeah.

 

so. You're not actually getting the bleeding edge with a thing that the React team creates, which is like, what? But I mean,

 

Yeah.

 

the problem has always been the server. There's no, you know, CRA is meant to go and build a static build. You deploy to like S3 or your CDN or whatever.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Basically I like Gatsby, but not without the page routing and all that. And, you know, Next.js has always had the server stuff. It's server first. And... that helps when it comes to React Server components.

 

Oh yeah, totally. I think having like server side, like SSR having like SRA stuff like that in the backend makes it so much better for building like full stack components compared to just a front end or just like that initial component that people can see. And so I think also building on top of that, like getting more people to not only think of the front end, but also how that impacts the API and the servers that they work with and how like that entire infrastructure works together is a great, a great way of maybe making people more. considerate of the full stack environment.

 

Just as an update, the Create React app is still under the Facebook organization on GitHub, which they have not renamed to Meta yet. Although

 

It would

 

like...

 

be a huge pain in the butt. Can you imagine?

 

Hey.

 

Like how

 

Oh

 

many

 

yeah.

 

CID CD scripts are about to be changed? UGHH

 

Although if you go to their org, github.com slash Facebook, it just says Meta. It's

 

Yeah,

 

got the Meta logo, but

 

well,

 

they still have the name.

 

that's easy to fix, you

 

Yeah,

 

know.

 

it's just fun to think about. You know there's a meeting at Facebook about

 

Ha ha ha ha

 

when

 

ha!

 

we, how do we switch that over?

 

Yeah, it's like, do we change it? Do we not? Like, what's going on?

 

Yeah,

 

Hehehe

 

oh my gosh. All right. So is, oh sorry. So you're mentioning that you're getting, or we're talking about your educational background and how you got into all of this. Do you think that front end is the easiest way to kind of start out into, so is it where you started out?

 

Yeah, it is where I started out. I started out learning front end for a hackathon a couple, like,

 

Ah, nice!

 

yeah, it's a couple of years ago. And then from there, it kind of just like sparked my interest in the entire infrastructure. And so I used Create React app for this hackathon. And I made a mental health counseling website. And yeah, and it did really well. And so like that really sparked like my interest of programming further and finding stuff to further that. And so I got into Node.js, Express, MongoDB, like all the stuff that just led into like the Myrn stack. And so like from there, obviously, it kind of made it a lot easier, at least for me, to transition from front end to server side, because I was able to see like... how API calls were interpreted in React and then how I could build that on my own. And so I would, yeah, that's, I would say that's probably the easiest way of doing it.

 

The MyrnStack 2 is Mongo Express React and Node. For anybody else that needed that acronym looked up.

 

Amazing how much Mongo is still around in a thing, you know? I would have expected,

 

Yeah, it is.

 

yeah, okay.

 

It is. I like GraphQL

 

For better

 

as well.

 

and for worse. Yes,

 

Yeah.

 

I love GraphQL, yeah.

 

GraphQL is great. Um, it's yeah. Like that's I've been using

 

Hahaha

 

that so much, honestly. Like it's, it's, it's an amazing thing. So.

 

So you said you're a self-taught developer, but it sounds like you're also going for a computer science degree at the moment. So what's the motivation behind that?

 

Well, I mean, obviously, being a self-taught developer is cool and everything, but also having that degree to back you up also has some say in the play. So I think

 

Yeah.

 

I think having both of those things would be great. And also just furthering my computer science knowledge in the higher education world would be a great a great move for me. So that that's my personal play for it. And also just meeting meeting people like myself, meeting people who want to learn to program and want to code. Um, just in like the networking side of things.

 

Okay,

 

Yeah.

 

all right. But

 

Here it comes.

 

yeah, yeah. So what's your review of this though? Cause like my daughter is going through EECS and man, the courses are like so retro. It's like C++ man, yo, really? You're

 

Yeah.

 

gonna learn C++? What year is it again? Anyways, is it relevant? Like, are you, I mean, are you teaching your teachers?

 

No, I mean, that's honestly a hard question. I think, well, because I learned it's Java and Python is mainly like what they're using to teach. And like,

 

All right, all right.

 

I think those are kind of like, you know, Java, like 50, like Java 5050.

 

Yeah.

 

But like

 

Python!

 

Python, Python

 

Data

 

definitely

 

sciences.

 

relevant.

 

Oh

 

Yeah,

 

yeah.

 

yeah, definitely relevant. And so it's like those things I think are useful, but then they don't really require us to learn C++ or C or any of those, like lower level languages, honestly, probably useful. Because like who's gonna use those nowadays like nobody

 

Hehehehe

 

and so I think I think that they're doing they're doing a good job of adapting To the real world to some degree but I definitely do believe that some some colleges do take the liberty of just teaching their students whatever they think is best instead of listening to you know, what what the what the job market is looking for what people

 

Right.

 

are actually using nowadays, so

 

Yeah, that's good to hear. Cause I think actually Java and Python is a pretty good mix, honestly, because I feel like the Java is still probably the biggest, uh, language out there in terms of like enterprise companies, places where you might get a job, right? So I feel like you also need some language that can teach you about, uh, object orientation and such, just because a lot of languages use that as well. Cause I remember when I graduated, which was, uh, getting to the point where doing the math is a little troubling.

 

Hehehe

 

But

 

Hahaha

 

when I graduated 15 years ago, my college was switching from C++ to Java. So I learned everything with C++ and then sort of retired knowledge because I didn't end up using it for many, many years. So it's good to hear that it's somewhat modern. I am curious, is there any web development being taught as part of the computer science program?

 

Not really, no.

 

What?

 

It's, that's

 

Yeah.

 

what I'm saying.

 

Oh

 

They

 

my

 

don't have

 

God.

 

a, there is not a lot

 

What?

 

of web development in higher ed, yeah. And like, it's all like under graphic design or like, it's really weird how they like portray, even though like web development is like the number one place that software engineers go. Like everyone

 

Yeah?

 

does web

 

Yeah.

 

development. And so it's like the fact that they're not teaching this, it's like, what are they trying to teach their students? So. I'm just as confused as you guys are. Like, I have no idea what they're teaching.

 

Hehehe

 

And it's so, there's so many parts of CS that are really pivotal in learning and understanding things like React, really understanding them, like, you know, the

 

Mm-hmm.

 

closure stuff and there's like a really interesting aspects of the language that you have to learn to understand React and are really grounded in CS. And yeah, it's given this kind of like, oh, it's an artsy fartsy thing. And

 

Yeah.

 

it's like, what the heck, man? It's not artsy-partsy. It

 

Yeah,

 

is really

 

exactly.

 

hard, guys. Like, seriously.

 

Yes.

 

I've been doing this for a long time. I can, I'll do a hot take and say, God dang it, it's harder than making an express server to serve an API. What does that take? Connect to Mongo, grab

 

Mm-hmm.

 

some stuff, shoot it out the door, whatever.

 

No, that's valid. I totally agree. I think front end is harder than back end.

 

Yeah, man.

 

I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

 

Yeah.

 

But

 

Yeah.

 

the optimist, people can argue that optimizing the back end is hard, but I feel like everyone, they've been doing it for years. But optimizing the front end, that's hard. Making it efficient to call APIs and show it, that's hard.

 

and getting it to run on every single browser

 

Uh huh.

 

and responsively, it's huge.

 

Oh yeah, yeah.

 

But I think that might be the reason not to teach it, because

 

Hahaha!

 

I will say that I don't think JavaScript should be the first language you learn, honestly, just because there's so many weird little quirks that you get used to over time. But if it's the first thing you learn, you start to go down some weird rabbit holes of teaching how objects work in JavaScript and how the primitive types and the typecasting. And all of that gets a, it's, it's a little bit wonky as a first language. And the browser is a little bit wonky as well, but I think it in one, you could see both sides, right? In one case, that's why it's important to teach because

 

Yeah.

 

people are going to realistically deal with it. But at the other hand, it's, it's, it's messy as like an introductory type of thing.

 

Yeah, I think introductory maybe not the best start, but overall it definitely needs to be taught.

 

Yeah, because everybody who doesn't, honestly, who doesn't at least touch front-end code nowadays, even if you're a backend person, just knowing how the browser works and

 

Yeah.

 

being able to understand the basics, I feel like is really a fundamental skill of computer science at this point. It's the most common runtime of code by like a lot.

 

Mm-hmm like the internet

 

Yep.

 

exists for a reason and people need to respect it for that.

 

Hehehe

 

So

 

And this is how TJ tells people that he's never worked in a big company without telling them that he's never worked in a big company. I worked at Nike and I'm telling you the backend folks there, they were like, I don't know what he was this HT LM. What is,

 

I'm gonna go get some water.

 

what are you,

 

I'm gonna

 

what is that? What's what's

 

Ah, no, no, I worked in big insurance.

 

Alright,

 

The

 

alright.

 

backend people though, like at least had to be aware, right? Like

 

Hahaha!

 

sometimes they had to use the web app to test their backend code, right? Like you have to create some set of circumstances and knowing, I mean, hey, maybe you just got to read JavaScript errors and figure things out

 

They just

 

better.

 

use Postman all day.

 

Yeah,

 

Yeah.

 

But

 

yeah.

 

I mean, they do have to know, OK, if the front end is going to make it, it's going to be viewing, putting this data on a page. It needs to not be an n plus 1 REST

 

Uh-huh.

 

query. Obviously, helped by GraphQL. But yeah. So there's some amount of talking that needs to happen.

 

Yeah, GraphQL solves a lot of those issues though, but you know,

 

Oh, dear.

 

different store completely, so.

 

So, Colin, we have a lot of listeners that are just starting off developing into the front end world. I'm curious from your experience, you found your way on this podcast, you started writing, you've put some articles out there. What tips do you have for people just getting started in terms of getting their names out there, finding a job, best courses, right, or learning material? Like just, I'm curious, curious, like grab bag of tips for people in that sort of position.

 

Yeah, I think honestly, like being in tutorial hell is like the worst part of it. Like get yourself in front of a computer and code and you'll like get there 10 times quicker. Like I think people get stuck in just watching YouTube videos. Like I was stuck there. Like just watching YouTube videos to like figure everything out about like the front end, the back end. Like it's not worth it. Like I learned so much more just building the stuff on my own than I ever would. watching a video about it. And so I think that number one. Also number two is just like asking for help. Like I think there's a huge stigma around like asking other people for help in computer science. You know, like nobody knows everything. We all Google. We all Google stuff. It like no one's immune to that. And so I think just being more open about asking other people, whether your friends or people online, like, you know, how do you do this? How do you do that? It's going to be a lot easier for you. I think in terms of courses though. I took a couple courses on Udemy that were really helpful. Stephen Greider, he's really good in terms of React and Node.js. And then like Free Code Camp, they have some great stuff for everything. And then I personally use VS Code as my IDE and getting a job, poof. That's a hard thing to break into. Breaking into the job market as a self-taught developer is definitely difficult. But I think good steps would be either A, being like freelancing. So I worked as a freelancer for a little while and that was able to build my resume quite a bit. Working with projects, working directly with clients, putting like some stuff on my resume to say like, hey. I do know what I'm doing, people pay me for my work like I'm not a nobody. I think that really can help you get your foot in the door. Also just taking unpaid internships, you know, a little bit like I'm not for unpaid internships, let me say I think all internships should be paid, but if you wanna gain the experience, it's a pretty easy way of. getting your foot in the door and saying, hey, I did work with a huge company. I did this, I did that. Showing you have some experience in the field can definitely make it easier for getting a job. And then obviously grinding lead coder, whatever you have to do for that.

 

Ah!

 

Which obviously not, I don't like doing that. Nobody likes doing it, but it's just a part of being a programmer is having to learn data structures, learn algorithms and learn how to vomit it back up in an interview. So,

 

Yeah

 

す

 

just how it is.

 

Those are great and it echoes some tips we've had before. I think one of our go-to is just build. And

 

Yeah.

 

I think too, especially if you have something you want to build that's real for you. So it's not like tutorials are great, but you're going to be way more motivated if you're building something that you actually want to exist. automate something in your house or build some dashboard of data you want to see, or build

 

Yeah.

 

a website for your small business or friend's small business or something like that. Because if it's real, you'll feel motivated to do it. And then, like when you get stuck, then you can go to YouTube and watch Jack's YouTube videos on

 

Ha

 

how to

 

ha.

 

solve this specific problem because you're going to want to solve it because otherwise your website's not going to exist. So you're not going to just give up on this task. You know, you're more... likely to see it through and get it done.

 

No, yeah, totally. I totally agree. Building it is just the number one way to get there, I think. And there

 

And that's

 

was...

 

how you got started, right?

 

Yeah.

 

You built

 

Yeah.

 

out that app and that got your juices flowing. And I think that's how it always is. And I think there's so many cool things that you can get into now that you have that skillset. Like you can take your psychology background. And I think there's a lot of psychology in UI. And

 

Mm-hmm.

 

with your Python stuff, there's some data sciences in there, and potentially doing some visualizations on data sciences. Oh, it's, yeah,

 

Yeah,

 

there's lots of different

 

yeah,

 

ways

 

like,

 

you can go.

 

yeah, there's just like even just starting out just gives you so many more opportunities than if you didn't start and so I'm trying to think what else I even use but just taking taking the time to like and also don't rush yourself I think lots of

 

Hmm.

 

people like Taking it like, you know, I'm gonna learn how to code in three months six months nine months Like if when you set your boundary those boundaries for yourself It really like forces you to not really learn and just you know, check it off like check off the boxes You know what I'm saying? And so like giving yourself that time to learn it and understand it and then move forward is a lot better And then there's also this github repo. It's called like the front end What is it called the front end roadmap or whatever?

 

Uh-huh.

 

that

 

Oh!

 

is really helpful for just seeing like what technologies to learn and what things to learn next or what else do you want to learn.

 

To give our folks a little perspective, how long do you think it took you to become a developer who could lay in a job in the industry?

 

Probably, um, maybe like a year and a half, two years maybe?

 

Yeah,

 

Um,

 

yeah.

 

yeah,

 

And

 

like...

 

you get these folks out there saying you can do it in 60 days? No,

 

Dude, that's impossible. Yeah,

 

no.

 

like, okay, computer science is like a different way of thinking compared

 

Yeah!

 

to regular, like, it's like, it's not just teaching you the stuff, it's teaching you how to think about it correctly.

 

It will change your brain.

 

Yes,

 

Yeah,

 

it does,

 

Hehehehe

 

yeah.

 

yes.

 

I

 

And

 

mean, you'll

 

so

 

be

 

like.

 

out at dinner and people will be thinking like one way and you're like,

 

Yeah, literally.

 

you're a new, you're a mutant. Yeah.

 

Yeah, like it's a different way of thinking, a different way of taking in data and thinking about it, like it's a completely different way of thinking that you have to teach yourself. And so that's not something you can do in 60 days. Like that's not something you can do in 90 days. Like it takes a long time. So I don't think people realize that.

 

Those of us that have been doing it for a long time, we're still learning. I think the crazy thing, especially for front-end developers, is that there really truly is an absolute enormous amount of stuff to learn.

 

Oh lord.

 

So

 

Yeah.

 

you have to be somewhat humble and realize that, I mean, I've been doing this for a long time. There's lots of parts of the stack that I'm using that I have no idea how they work, right? There's some core technologies that everybody's going to have to learn. But you have to realize that you're never ever going to learn it all because you're all there's always going to be new things. And so it's a bit of embracing learning the core stuff and then maybe learning the stuff that interests you, right? The, the S because everybody has some sort of specialization, some, something they learn, so something that you enjoy building or solves a problem for you. All right. Are great things to learn. And eventually, uh, you'll, you'll be proficient enough that you can start to get into the industry. And then once you do that. tends to unlock a lot more doors from there.

 

Learn and relearn. I can't tell you my time to relearn

 

Oh god.

 

Flexbox.

 

Oh

 

Oh

 

yeah,

 

my God,

 

totally.

 

justify content. Which one is that? Is that the horizontal vertical? I don't know.

 

Yeah, I have to

 

Always

 

look at

 

go to

 

like

 

Chi

 

you

 

Chi.

 

go to like the web, the

 

Oh yeah.

 

HTML, like you just like the chart and it's just like what like what do they do? Like tell

 

Yeah,

 

me what

 

yeah,

 

I'm

 

Cheers.

 

supposed to do.

 

yeah. I Google for flex, flex cheat sheet. And it's like

 

Yeah.

 

the first first purple link. It's like, yep, that's the one. Okay,

 

Yep, exactly.

 

you know,

 

I know

 

there

 

exactly

 

it

 

what

 

is.

 

you're talking about.

 

Yeah.

 

There's that same

 

Every time

 

Chris Coyer article that he wrote on Flexbox that is like an amazing reference that I'm pretty sure he's retired to some Caribbean island.

 

Right,

 

He just

 

right?

 

threw like two ads on that page. And like,

 

Yeah,

 

for

 

he's

 

me

 

good.

 

alone, I've probably personally paid for at least an island or two, just cause I view that thing. Every time I need Flexbox, I can't remember the stupid syntax, so.

 

And every, I mean, yes, yeah, Flexbox is everything really, honestly.

 

So

 

Oh yeah.

 

I want to bring one additional tip that, Colin, you didn't actually mention, but to write about your experiences is

 

Mmm.

 

quite valuable as well. Cause I mean, that's how we reached out to you. That's how we knew you existed, right? Because you had written about it and clearly you have some writing talent through maybe your other background or the other schooling that you went to. And that can be amazingly valuable as well.

 

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean, I think writing just in any profession is very helpful. It's an underdeveloped talent, I think. Being able to voice yourself through writing and being able to show your opinions thoughtfully and correctly is very helpful just in any profession. Like whether you're going, because like even in computer science, like you have to write documentation, you have to write comments, you have to write these things to explain what you're doing and not having that talent to be able to explain yourself is detrimental to not only like yourself, because you know, you go back on code you wrote six months ago, you're like, what was I doing? And like

 

Mm-hmm.

 

having those comments, having that stuff there to remind yourself super helpful. Or if somebody else is coming onto the code base for the first time and they're like, what is going on? Like writing your documentation efficiently and having those skills is just like, it's incredible. So I think developing your writing muscle is like a huge one.

 

People, like I think a lot of developers, if you're in the grind and you're trying to be a front end developer and you're like, you know, just absolutely looking up all these, these, these technologies, you don't think about writing, but here's the thing at any job, you're not going to escape email, you're not going to escape

 

Mmmhahaha!

 

Yep.

 

Slack messaging, you're not going to escape

 

Yeah.

 

meetings where you have to clearly communicate and, and, and write documents. And so it's, it's really just as valuable, if not more valuable of a skill and it can make you stand out. Because if you have a blog where you've written things and you're in an interview process against somebody that hasn't done that, well, you have a clear way of demonstrating that you understand some of this technology.

 

Oh, yeah, totally. It's, it's, it's, it's very helpful, I think, in not only the interview setting, but just in like the personal sense of, like, learning, like teaching, teaching what you learn, like,

 

Yeah.

 

being able to voice what you know, and better explain it yourself to others.

 

It, we, we talked a lot about writing on the show and about communicating, but we haven't really talked about how to get into it. And, and TJ, you mentioned like Chris Coyer's article on, on flex star, um, on flex box and flex bases, blah, blah, blah, all that stuff. And one thing to think about when you're, when you're building up that muscle is look to see, cause his article, like everybody uses it. Try and figure out why that's the case. Try and figure out what he cracked in there in terms of the structure of the thing, how he figured, how he organized the information. Read critically for that, and then see what makes good documentation, and encrypt it, just crib it, just take it. Take the organizational whatever and just apply it to something else, fine, whatever. Also think about how you build up that muscle by doing it, by also reading other folks critically.

 

Yeah, do what's authentic to you.

 

Hahaha, that's true.

 

I would say also, right, like whatever, whatever you're, something about you, you listening here right now, something about you is very unique, right? You have some unique way of communicating, of writing, maybe it's making videos, like you wanna be a YouTube superstar like Jack,

 

Ha!

 

the different ways of communicating and that sort of uniqueness about you will come across if you're really authentic in whatever you put together.

 

Yeah, I think reverse engineering success is a good way

 

Yeah?

 

of putting it.

 

Mmm,

 

Like finding

 

yes.

 

what works, finding what works and then finding how you can do the same thing. Like continuing that pattern is super helpful.

 

I've learned from this, speaking of YouTube, I sometimes watch like YouTubers that I like watching and see some of the things they do, some of the patterns in

 

Mm-hmm.

 

their videos.

 

Yep.

 

And a lot of the YouTubers I watch aren't tech related, but they'll do something interesting and I'll think like, oh, I could do that sort of thing, but like in JavaScript

 

For tech.

 

or

 

Yeah,

 

for tech.

 

exactly.

 

Yeah.

 

And

 

Yeah.

 

it's funny sometimes where inspiration comes from.

 

No, yeah, I want to break into YouTube. I just never I just haven't really gotten

 

Hehehe

 

there yet. So.

 

That's a lot of work. A

 

Yeah.

 

lot

 

Well, Jack

 

of work.

 

has a 20 24 piece series on freaking it's available for

 

Which

 

the low

 

by the

 

cost.

 

way is one of the things you learn that people don't want is the series. They want the free code camp. I got like a four hour video on something

 

Yeah,

 

but I

 

whatever.

 

guess you can just stop it.

 

It's, it's a grind, right? Getting into YouTube is no different than getting into software development. It's, it's not something you do overnight.

 

No.

 

It probably also takes you a year or two of like working the muscle, just doing it, learning all the tech behind it. Right. It's there's, there's no shortcuts. If you put in the work, you'll, you'll find success eventually.

 

And there are going to be a lot of embarrassing mistakes along the way. And you got to be able to get over them, get past yourself and realize that those are actually when you learn the most is when you hit the mistake and it's going to be great because then you're going to have this kind of memory that's like, oh, right. I don't want to do that again. You know.

 

No, yeah, I mean, making mistakes is part of the game.

 

Oh yeah.

 

Failing is just, you're just one step closer to success. So I totally

 

Yep,

 

agree with you.

 

it's easy to say, far harder to do.

 

Oh yeah,

 

It's

 

I totally

 

one of those

 

agree.

 

things. It's one of those things you could totally see on a, it's like a motivational sign,

 

I was just

 

right?

 

gonna say,

 

Like it's, yeah.

 

yeah, Colin's got a great future ahead in like motivational

 

Ha!

 

posters. Hang in there! Hehehehe.

 

Oh, well, Colin, this has been an awesome chat. I think people could learn a lot from you telling your experiences. Is there anything we haven't touched on? Anything else you want to bring up about? either create React app or educational experiences that you want to pass along.

 

I didn't have one final thing. I was just thinking about just choosing what you want to use. So specifically in frontend, there's like Svelte React, like used to be Angular, View. They have so many choices of what you want to start learning. And I think just choose one and just go with it.

 

Yeah.

 

And stop being. I'm scared of the choice. Am I making the right choice, the wrong? Any choice is good, you just gotta make a choice and go with it. And that's kind of what started with me. I just started using React because it was the most popular framework and I was like, you know, might as well. And that's kind of where I stuck. Maybe I'll learn another framework later, but right now I'm just good with React. So I think just getting over your fear of messing up and fear of choosing the wrong thing, it's gonna push you one step closer.

 

So you've studied learning React, right? You've learned HTML, you've learned CSS, you've learned events, you've learned component

 

Yeah.

 

creation, right? And those are gonna be across all of the different platforms. Obviously the core fundamental technologies for sure, but also most technologies nowadays are gonna have components and all that sort of stuff as well. So yeah,

 

Yeah,

 

you're

 

yeah, life

 

not

 

cycle

 

boxing

 

methods,

 

yourself

 

everything's

 

in.

 

the same.

 

Yeah,

 

Yeah.

 

exactly. Just how they

 

Excellent.

 

say it.

 

I think that is good advice to wrap up on.

 

Hmm-hmm.

 

So why don't we move into our picks for this week. And Jack, do you want to kick us off?

 

Sure. Speaking about self-learning and teaching yourself things, when I was a kid, I would see all these folks solving Rubik's cubes. And I was like, oh man, I'm dumb. I can't do a Rubik's cube, right? And we just happen to have one. Like here I am, Leo, X number of years later, way too many years later. And we just happen to have one and I'm dinking around with it like, well, you know, whatever. and still like, oh man, I can't solve this thing, right? You know, and I actually did a YouTube video. I'm not me personally, I watched a YouTube video and I figured it out. I'll give you the link in the description. It was really good, but it's cool to get over those things and learn that well, one, it's not a measure of smartness. I wasn't dumb for not being able to do a Rubik's cube, but you know, also now I can do a Rubik's cube. So

 

Yeah.

 

it's a twofer, right?

 

Yeah, that's exciting.

 

Yeah!

 

Yeah, my kids went through a phase where they were addicted to Rubik's Cubes and

 

Oh,

 

they

 

okay.

 

both learned to do them through YouTube

 

There

 

also.

 

you go, there you go.

 

So it's kind of nuts, but I've still yet to, so maybe you'll motivate me. Actually, my big thing that I've wanted to do forever is learn to juggle. So

 

Yes,

 

that's

 

yes.

 

the one that's been on my list. So maybe I'll have to find some time,

 

There was

 

some

 

a really

 

motivation.

 

good, there's like a Cletsons book on juggling. It

 

Oh,

 

was really

 

yeah.

 

good.

 

Yeah.

 

Yeah.

 

I'll just, yeah, I don't know, maybe. I've got to find the motivation, get the right motivational poster up and

 

Right,

 

get

 

there

 

it done.

 

you go. It's all about extrinsic and intrinsic motivations.

 

Yeah.

 

Ha.

 

So my pick for this week is Lenza. Lenza AI. It is an app that is out on, I think iOS, I don't think it's available for Android yet, but they're working on it. But it's one of those apps that just uses AI. And in this case, it's to generate avatar images of yourself. And so basically, the way it works is you have to upload to them 10 to 20 pictures of yourself. So it's got to be photos of just you, like just your, just your face. And essentially it uses that and then generates sort of artistically generates some avatar images for you in various pose like right right now it's doing like holiday ones and anime versions of yourself and sci fi versions of yourself. And jack jack has seen the results of mine

 

I did it myself,

 

and

 

actually.

 

oh you did it yourself

 

Yeah, yeah, yeah,

 

excellent.

 

yeah.

 

And more than anything it's amazingly entertaining like

 

Hmm.

 

it's. I would recommend doing it in a group setting or maybe like with

 

Ha

 

your family,

 

ha ha!

 

because it's hilarious to just look through because some of them are actually quite good. Like at least in my case, you generate 55 images. In my case, probably five to 10 of them were really good. And I was like, Oh, this is kind of a fun picture to me. And then there's a good bunch. They're just ridiculous. And those are actually kind of in a way, some of the more

 

Yeah,

 

fun

 

the ones

 

ones

 

like,

 

just,

 

multiple arms. You're like,

 

yeah.

 

what?

 

Hahaha

 

What? What happened there?

 

The AI created a Santa hat for me that had two balls going out the side. And I'm like, what, you know, what sort of computer craziness

 

W-w-winning.

 

is this? Yeah.

 

So much winning. We should make that hat.

 

It's just funny to see the way like a computer does it, but it is a few dollars, like right now in iOS, it's, it's, it's, it's kind of a dark pattern. It makes you sign up for a subscription that you then have to cancel.

 

Oh,

 

And

 

so you canceled it, because I was

 

yeah.

 

going to ask, like, you get the phone, and I was like, ah, what is going on?

 

It's silly. I think they know they've got a hype thing right now. So

 

Oh, okay.

 

they force you to sign up for a subscription that's free, but you have to cancel. And then you have

 

Thank

 

to pay

 

you.

 

four bucks to do the images. So that part kind of sucks and it feels

 

So.

 

a little bit, a little bit, I don't know, like exploitative, but the product is amazing.

 

Yeah.

 

Like the end result is almost worse than the bad business practices.

 

Ha!

 

So

 

Yeah,

 

that's LENZA L-E-N-S-A.

 

those pictures, I've been seeing those pictures all around social media. They're so cool. I've yet to do it myself though, but.

 

Yeah, it's worth

 

It's

 

it,

 

worth

 

unfortunately,

 

the five bucks.

 

yeah.

 

Yeah.

 

Hmm.

 

Colin, what picks do you have for us?

 

So we, well, we were talking about GitHub Co-pilot earlier

 

Mmm.

 

and

 

Yeah.

 

one of my picks. was that GitHub Copilot is free for students, which I did not know

 

Oh.

 

until

 

Oh.

 

the other day. And so any students can download GitHub Copilot, add it to their IDE, and it's free, which is awesome. And so I've just been learning to use it recently myself. Super helpful, super cool, super nice that you don't have to repeat yourself over and over to make the same stuff, just pull somebody else's code. So

 

Hahaha

 

it's awesome. And so I was wanting to tell people about that. And... I've also been getting into thrifting recently. So just talking about, you know, being better for the environment, going out and getting clothes from Goodwill or some other place and, you know, taking some clothes for yourself and just seeing what you can find. It's all in the hunt really, is just finding what cool clothes you can get at Goodwill and what are some crazy

 

Right?

 

stuff, so.

 

What, what, what, what? Go thrift shopping.

 

Yeah.

 

Yeah, my

 

Yeah.

 

kid loves thrift shopping. Good stuff.

 

Excellent. Well, Colin, this has been a lot of fun. My last question for you, if people want to follow you, find your articles, what's the best link that we can send people to?

 

Um, well, my, okay, you can go to medium.com slash Colin Pfeiffer, I think, which might be, it's probably not going to be able to be spelled, but.

 

You can see it'll be in the name in the podcast players.

 

Oh yeah,

 

Make

 

true.

 

sure to look up how to spell Pfeiffer.

 

Yeah. That's where my articles are. You can follow me on LinkedIn, same name. And then my website's callingfiverr.dev. So any of those.

 

Excellent. Well, this has been a lot of fun. Thanks for joining us. I had a really good time.

 

Thanks, me too. Thanks for having me on.

 

Yeah, me too as well.

 

Cool. Well, thanks everybody and until next week.

 

See you then.

 

See ya.