Challenging learning experience
Learning something new is always marked with high uncertainty. One is always confident he/she will get it done though cannot answer the question, how to get it done. I’m guessing everyone keeps procrastinating getting started something new and likes being comfortable. But it doesn’t always last long before there is a reality check ,you need to start ,you’ve been wasting a lot of time procrastinating.
Getting started with React made me have goosebumps.I spent considerable amount of time researching. Consulted friends who had to do the same challenge in React and got the answers “I have not started that challenge….,I did that challenge in angular…, maybe I can hook you up with tutorials…., I’m currently working on something else ,that challenge is on hold”. These responses got me shaken a bit. I ended up asking myself, if all these people are afraid of React, clearly in their responses, is it that hard?, will I be able to get things done in React?
One morning I got down to my laptop and Eureka! I found an awesome tutorial on getting started with React. The same morning, received a slack message from one of my friends letting me know that he had shared some tutorials and I could access them from my drive. I hurriedly downloaded the tutorials and a book. Curious of what they contained I dived into read mode.
I was slow in going through the tutorial because I was so afraid of failing or getting blocker after blocker. So at around 4 pm I took my first break after sitting on my laptop for the whole morning and the better part of afternoon. As soon as I was done with the break I got started with the first example. After each example the smile on my face would get bigger. I did like three examples and felt like I knew everything in React. PS: I just worked with a form, that had a name label, input text box ,button and rendering a home page.
Confident that I was good in React, I started working on my challenge. Setting up React and rendering my Javascript was easy but then I needed to work with multiple pages. I was used to <a> tags in html but these were not working! I went back to Google. I needed answers. After spending the better part of the night researching, exhausted and my eyes heavy with sleep,I decided to sleep and work on it first thing in the morning.
Early morning, I sat and prayed to get things done. I’m sure if you’re a programmer you’ve had to spend a whole day, with a bug stopping you from proceeding with anything. Personally, I have experienced it so many times. You don’t want to have such a day, one feels so bad not doing anything, or not been successful!
After sending some slack messages, trying to get answers, I got a response that was an eye opener. A link with a web application done in React. I reviewed it, taking lots of notes and learning a lot. From that application I got to know how to define routes for my pages, handle submission of form data and parent-child relationship in React. Using this web application example I got to make considerable progress in my challenge. It was a big relief, I managed to learn something new and had a not so hard time learning something new.
It was a challenge learning React, I had to do a lot of researching, go for days staring at my laptop and doing nothing, doing so little in a day. But just like the say , the end justifies the means. I got to learn React!
