The title of the post doesn’t mean that my interest in pursuing a software development career is diminishing, but rather that occasionally I don’t feel like learning/doing anything of substance relating to software development, and would rather just watch binge watch something on Netflix. Taking a night off however means that it’s that much easier to take the following night off as well. I can understand how I can view it as a waning interest, whereas it’s mostly likely just not having that resolve and fortitude to prevent multiple days off back-to-back.

I felt this way the entire week when I didn’t post anything, postponing and then making concessions for my lack of effort, preferring instead to shut off my mind with streaming television on a nightly basis. I did muster enough energy to update previous posts, open and close some issues, and complete some previous projects, but the sole purpose of this blog was to learn something of significance weekly, and I felt defeated when nothing bore fruit in the form of a blog entry.

FOCUS

Recounting from the weekly update from a fortnight ago, I was working on completing the anml library I had started. As of now, it’s at v1.0.0 and published on npm. It’s simplicity is shown by the APIs provided for it, but I hope to expand on it incrementally by adding my animal species, and trait properties such as diet, lifespan, predators, etc in future updates. Creating this library also introduced me to new topics related to library creation and maintenance, such as how to write informative commit messages that can double as a changelog, how to semantically publish new versions of projects automatically based on the git messages, and setup continuous integration.

I made some efforts to complete the vimscript book, but my interest slowly waned as I turned towards Progressive Web Apps and VueJS. I previously made an effort to learn Vue and React simultaneously, but React became my focus due to its booming job market. This week I made an ambitious goal to create a fullstack web app using Vue and then recreate it using React. This will hopefully help me see the entirety (or at least most) of the Vue API, including the vuex, vue-router, transitions, directives, vuetify, etc. Additionally, this will help solidify some of my glanced over areas of react including react-router, react-redux, and redux-forms potentially. I believe this is the point preventing me from applying to jobs – that I am not confident enough to complete more complex projects, considering that I have various projects that implement pieces of a fullstack project, but not a single one that encompasses al of them.

CHANGELOG

Let me reiterate – I didn’t get to doing much this week. However, I did open some issues on my own projects, as well send pull requests for those issues. I am most proud of the work I have done on my xkcli project and the fact that I 50+ downloads of from just these two last weeks! I added this new option so that a user change the default text color of the title and alt text using the chalk package. Also of note, I closed the issue where the alt text would be displayed before the image. It will most likely be my favorite project for a while, considering I struggled with it immensely from the onset – learning async/await, using commander, writing documentation, and adding new features.

WEEKLY GOALS

  • I’ll finish the fullstack Vue project this week, cross my heart and hope to die. I will also recreate it in React or least a similar project with the same knowledge base acquired from Vue.
  • Add significantly more animal species to the anml library and create a project plan to add the new properties for each animal. These new properties will require their own APIs, therefore store these changes in a staging branch for v2.0.0.
  • Finish backlog of drafts and post them.
  • Learn enough about PWAs to create a simple project.

SEE YOU NEXT WEEK!