Getting Started, Starting Documented

I have just joined and I found this place so compelling that I feel pushed to write my first post and share my humble experience.

I have also been inspired by two good DEV articles with the same title: "I Wish I Had Started Documenting My Tech Journey Earlier", which highlight the importance of keeping track of progress wherever one is in the tech journey. So here I am documenting my 'first' steps.

And I put first in quotes for a reason.

While it is in fact my first time sharing, I have been around tech for quite some time, mainly learning to code but switching between multiple frameworks and languages.

I am a book person. I find books have a certain structured narrative that isn't found in the docs (debatable, I know). Anyway, after brushing up on HTML/CSS I started with PHP and the comprehensive two-part book called PHP 8 Objects, Patterns, and Practice and never went beyond the chapters on objects. After a while I subscribed to O'Reilly for a month (as expensive as it is) and got really bouncing between the endless cloud and web development technologies. I eventually decided to focus on JavaScript. (I also could not ignore the 'PHP is getting old, JS is the future' trend.)

I ultimately settled on two titles (and firmly decided: no more books, need to get building). The first, The Linux Command Line, because it's obviously an important skill whatever the niche. And the second, Eloquent JavaScript, the freely available, beautifully written, and obviously one of the most well-regarded references on the language, which I finally finished, if skimming through some heavy chapters like Regular Expressions and skipping most exercises.

And speaking of exercises, I did come to recognize I was doing a lot of theory and very little practice. I simply find little incentive to do book exercises, even though solutions are provided to compare or get unstuck.

Instead, I got myself a month of JSchallenger, a website that teaches JavaScript by giving small, bite-sized lessons and challenges starting with fundamentals and gradually going up. That one finally got me actually writing code. (Just note that there aren't too many of these challenges and there doesn't seem to be any added or updated stuff, so I don't see how it's a subscription thing.)

However, I recently came across the shiny, very recently released, colorfully Packt-covered second edition of Full-Stack React, TypeScript, and Node. And I really relish the shiny new stuff. Add to that a 9.99 sale that was about to end, and I simply could not resist...

I made the purchase and almost swore to make this one my last book, not that books are bad but that I really needed to make use of all this and start building something real instead of reading about coding and pursuing technologies.

That said, I just finished the first chapter and maybe I'll try to share what I learn here and 'review' the book along, at least to make for some active reading.

And as a first-time contributor (and as per the DEV publishing guidelines!) I will end by requesting that if any of this resonates with you in any way, please leave a question, a comment, whatever, and thank you for reading.