Weeknotes 24:24

July 4, 2024

Week of June 23–29

Embracing failure as a learning opportunity

One of the things that I appreciate about Josh Comeau is how he encourages his students in The Joy of React course to embrace failure as a learning opportunity. He thinks you can learn more from trying and failing than just breezing through things. He frames it as part of a growth mindset.

I worked through some exercises (Module 2, 8.01) on Friday. I got stuck on the last one. He had warned us that this one would challenge us a bit. I tried several approaches to solving the problem but was not getting there. I knew I was stuck so I decided to go ahead and watch the solution video. I was encouraged that even though I was not able to get to the solution on my own, I was thinking in the right direction.

The solution made sense to me as I watched the video. I was glad that I stuck with it as long as I did but also glad that I didn’t get discouraged by the fact that I couldn’t get there on my own. Josh’s encouragement has been helpful as I have been working through the course.

This project is meant to be challenging, especially if you’re coming to this course without any React experience. You may find yourself frustrated at times, not sure how to complete the exercise.

Here’s the thing, though: Struggling and failing is so much more productive than effortlessly breezing through an easier challenge. It’s not as much fun, to be sure, but it’ll help you become a rockstar React developer much more quickly.

Josh Comeau, The Joy of React

Articles I read

• On Blogging (T. M. Suffield)
• The Most Dangerous Thing a Christian Can Do (Tim Challies)
• How (and How Not) to Wait (Mark Vroegop)
• Modern CSS Layout is Awesome: Talking and Thinking About CSS Layout (Michelle Barker)
• It lets me write less JS (Chris Ferdinandi)
• What We Cannot Escape (Tim Challies)
• Burned by My Own Hot Take (Tyler Slicka) – I appreciated Tyler’s reflection and honest assessment of one of his most popular articles. I think it is worth a read to think about his different approach.

What I watched

I’m not the only one who doesn’t know HTML! (Kevin Powell) – Kevin goes through the results from the State of HTML 2023 survey. I started to take the survey and never went back to finish it. There were several things on the survey that I was not aware of. I need to walk through through the results and determine what I need to learn more about.

• The Great British Baking Show – Collections 9 and 10 (Netflix)
• Race: Bubba Wallace (Netflix)
• Gilmore Girls (Netflix)
• Return of the King (Disc 1 of Extended Edition) (DVD)
• Germany-Denmark European Championships (FOX)

Walking

• Monday morning – 4.07 miles in 1 hour and 15 minutes
• Thursday morning – 2.96 miles in 54 minutes
• Friday morning – 3.8 miles in 1 hour and 9 minutes

Books I am reading

• Not by Sight: A Fresh Look at Old Stories of Walking by Faith
• The Secret Lives of Color

What I played

• MLB The Show 23 (Rays)
• FIFA 23 (Manchester City)