Grinding Levels

Published Wed Sep 29 2021

Drinking From the Firehose

I find tension between the competing demands to keep learning vs. locking in what you’ve already learned. I felt like I was spinning my wheels, making the same site over and over, so I bought a LevelUpTutorials membership to fill in some obvious gaps in my knowledge.

Figma

One such gap is design. I am finding that going into a project without a clear idea of the design is a good way to lose a lot of time. You can spend a lot of time trying to find a CSS implementation of a design that when realized obviously stinks. I’m learning Figma in the hopes that I can cut down on the time I spend on designs that don’t work. Of course we know that the complexity must live somewhere, and Figma is no exception.

TypeScript

I’ve also been very curious about Typescript. Everything I read or listen to is buzzing about it. So I took the LevelUpTuts course on it. Having finished, I still find there’s a wide gulf between a rudimentary knowledge of TS and an ability to convert a complex project to TS. They say the beauty is that you don’t have to. I’m going to try to work it into the next project I do.

Deno

I shouldn’t be learning Deno, as I barely know Node. Oh well, I’m doing it anyway. Playing around with it a little, and I think I’m learning concepts that apply to Node as well. I’m still trying to wrap my head around why I need a backend JS framework at all, since everything is going serverless now, and since I learned a lot of what I use in the last year, I’m fully reliant on serverless architecture and don’t really even know anything else.

Next Project: PumpItUp!

I’ve been wanting a simple way to track the bodyweight workouts I do, so I’m designing a workout tracker app. I mocked up some design while learning Figma, and I’m thinking now I’ll start building out the project in Svelte and use TS along the way.

LevelUpTutorials

I have mixed feelings about this service. The monthly cost is 25 dollars, which I find pretty steep. I know from listening to Scott that he uses this as his learning tool, rewriting the site every time a new framework comes along that he wants to use.

It shows: it’s pretty buggy. Things glitch and the UI is not the best. The tutorials themselves aren’t very in depth. Wes’s stuff is deeper. However, it’s not a bad way to dip a toe in and see if you have interest in a topic, and you are guaranteed a certain quality level. I’ll probably drop the subscription after a few months, and I’m thinking this is actually built into the LevelUpTuts business model.