Weeknotes 25:06

February 11, 2025

Week of February 2–8

I worked on a project this week for The Joy of React course. It was a chance to put into practice what I have been learning in the first two modules of the course about React fundamentals and state. It is the first full application we have built in the course. The objective was to build a word game like Wordle.

Josh broke the project into five different exercises. Each exercise had its own objective and acceptance criteria. Each exercise has a solution video to watch after we had attempted to solve that particular one. Josh encourages his students to work through the problem first and then watch the solution video after you have come up with a solution or if you get stuck for more than 10 minutes. He thinks there is more value in getting unstuck rather than get frustrated and give up entirely.

I struggled with two of the exercises of keeping track of guesses and then displaying the guesses. I was a bit disheartened since this is my second time through the course and had been feeling more confident as I worked my way through it the second time. I had hoped that I could figure out the solutions on my own but I got stuck and decided to watch the solution videos. I wish I had saved my work and committed it to my repo before reworking it after watching the solution video so I could have reflected more on where I got tripped up.

One thing I have really appreciated about the course is the encouragement that Josh gives along the way. He is constantly addressing this because I am sure he knows that at times, we can tend to get frustrated when we struggle to apply what we have learned. I tried to keep that in mind as I didn’t do as well as I would have liked in those exercises.

But as I reflected upon it, I was more encouraged to realize I was headed in the right direction even if I didn’t know quite how to get all the way there. One of the things that tripped me up was trying to set the state from a child component and not the parent because a sibling component needed to use that state. I knew in my head that state is unidirectional. I think I did learn more by failing and then watching the solution video to understand why I failed.

I was encouraged by my attempt at the fifth exercise that brought an end to the game, either by guessing the correct word or by exhausting the number of attempts to guess the word. I was working through a solution and got stuck. But instead of watching the solution video, I tried to reset and attempt it again. And I was able to come up with a solution on the second attempt. The thrill of victory.

I added my own CSS to the project make the letter squares animate similar to the Wordle game. I had to adjust the animation of the success and failure message to accommodate the letter animation. I was inspired by Adam Argyle’s scroll animation demo and used the rotateX() function for the transform.

You can view my solution at https://jeffbridgforth.com/word-game/.

Articles I read

Books I am reading

What I watched

What I listening to

  • Bewitched by Laufey – I listened to this while working on last week’s weeknote post. The jazzy style was perfect for the moment.
  • Psalm 119, Volume 1 by Stillcreek – Tim Challies turned me onto this one. I listened to the album on my Saturday walk. I don’t listen to music often on my walks but decided to take my headphones with me and enjoyed listening to this album and some of my other liked songs.
  • GIANT by Stray Kids – My go-to Stray Kids. I enjoy listening to them when I am out driving.

Walking – 21.36 miles

  • Sunday – 4 miles in 1 hour and 11 minutes
  • Tuesday – 4.54 miles in 1 hour and 24 minutes
  • Wednesday – 4.58 miles in 1 hour and 22 minutes
  • Friday – 4.14 miles in 1 hour and 14 minutes
  • Saturday – 4.10 miles in 1 hour and 13 minutes

What I played

  • MLB The Show 23 (Rays) – I came back and won both games 6 and 7 to win the American League Championship Series against the Guardians. I don’t think I have lost a game 7 playoff game in MLB The Show in the years I have been playing. Now onto the World Series against the Braves. I played the Braves in the World Series with the Rays in MLB The Show 20 and won in five games. I have played with the Braves twice in MLB The Show, winning a World Series title with that team in MLB The Show 21.
  • NBA 2K25 (Nuggets) – I was 7-1 this week with playing with the Nuggets. I beat the Mavericks twice and the Grizzlies twice. My only loss came to the Lakers in LA. It was a close game and I had to fight back several times but came up short. I have really enjoyed playing basketball and enjoyed playing with this team.

1 Comment

  1. Weekly Links 02.10–02.16 – ntdln

    February 17th, 2025

    […] Weeknotes 25:06 (Jeff Bridgforth) […]

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