Builders Wanted
A junior web dev’s roadmap to building the open web
Greetings, friends! I have an announcement to make paired with an invitation. I’m excited to share that I am now working with Build DAO to bring people and resources together to build better communities around the world. We are on a mission to support builders who want to create open-source infrastructure and web applications for everyone. We are building our community on top of a culture of learning together and rewarding impactful contributions. Even more importantly, we are a community of shippers seeking continual improvement through iteration and experimentation.
Sound pretty cool? You can get in on it, too! We are currently leveraging tools from the NEAR ecosystem to implement chain abstraction, composable front-ends, and more. Experienced builders, especially React folks, can jump right in here to learn how to build composable, multichain, fully decentralized applications for all chains. Like what you see? Visit Build DAO and hit the “Join Now” button. It’s free to join and we are actively seeking contributors aligned with the builder mindset.
Message for junior web devs
True confessions time. As I am getting my feet under me in this new ecosystem, I’m not entirely satisfied with the current learning resources from my perspective as a fairly junior developer. To give you context for where I’m coming from, my go to stack is Next (app router) deployed to Vercel. I’ve dabbled in a few things for the backend but I’m most comfortable with Supabase. I can build my UI with minimal help but I’m hitting up ChatGPT and Stack Overflow when it’s time for scripting for interactivity, data fetching, and similar. If that sounds similar to where you are, the rest of this post is for us.
You can read an overview of BOS (blockchain operating system) components in the NEAR documentation but, here is the TL;DR you need to know for us to move ahead:
- BOS allows you to build, deploy, and access decentralized frontends
- You do not need any Solidity or Rust to build on the blockchain with BOS
- The BOS stack is based on components, blockchains, and gateways
- Components: composable frontends that solve specific problems
- Blockchains: store component code, assets, and data
- Gateways: render components anywhere
- Components (aka widgets) are React-based with their source code (HTML/CSS/JS) stored on-chain with NEAR
- Components can call functions on any chain — including all EVM chains and NEAR
- Gateways use a specially designed virtual machine to load and run frontends
- You can style components using Bootstrap classes or styled-components out of the box
- Wrappers are available to enable styling via Tailwind or Daisy UI
- There is a pretty nice collection of components we can fork and play with as we learn. We’ll get to that later on!
And now, the road map!
I’ve never used Bootstrap or styled-components. As discussed above, I’m still building skills in JavaScript/React script writing. I know I need to do some studying before I’m flying along building the open web like my super cool Build DAO friends. If you read this far, you also probably have new things to learn before you can get comfortable building. Guess what? That’s ok! We have an internet full of open-source information we can learn from, a supportive community to back us up if we get stuck, and we’re all going to move through this together.
What you can expect from me in the coming weeks:
I’m starting with this video from As a Programmer which outlines ten JavaScript concepts they consider the essential prerequisites for building with React. I plan to watch, learn, and then firm up my knowledge with outside resources as needed. This will be followed by a combination of blog posts and tutorials sharing key concepts and resources related to each of the ten JavaScript concepts covered in the video. I’ll also visit the React documentation to cover features that are specific to building out our components. As we move along, we will work on some examples of how these concepts are used in BOS/NEAR components. If we are diligent, study, and practice, we should feel much better about our scripting abilities here in a couple of weeks!
You can expect a similar approach for the styling aspects. I’ll identify some how-to guides, find resources, and explain everything we need to be able to make our components look exactly how we want. This part should be shorter but, we’ll build up our Bootstrap and styled-components skills with coding practice as we go along. We’ll also learn how to introduce the Tailwind and Daisy UI CSS libraries via a wrapper for when we’re ready to take our styling skills to the next level.
Finally, we’ll create our own open web projects once we have increased confidence in our basic skills. I’m still building this piece out but, we’ll learn how to fork and customize components as well as make our own from scratch. At the end of this process, you will have created your very own BOS components and shared them on-chain with the NEAR builder community — making you a blockchain developer! We will also have collectively created a set of open-source resources to onboard other junior web developers. Win, win.
Get signed up. It’s free!
If this all sounds useful to you, I invite you to fill out this short form to add yourself to the email notification list for this learning series. Spam is uncool and this email will only be used to let you know when new materials drop and other relevant updates for this series. If you have any questions in the meantime, you can DM me on Twitter/X or drop by and visit us at Build DAO. I’m looking forward to learning and onboarding to the open web together!
