Fun projects are fun. Who knew?
I've been struggling all week with projects. Part of that is because they turn into these huge sprawling collections of components and folders and it becomes overwhelming for me. I'm still wrapping up my to-do list but at last count it had at least 8 different files spread out over 4 folders. May I remind you that I just started writing code a month ago? Some of you seasoned pros may want to chime in and tell me ghost stories about your double-digit projects and how "it will happen to me too" when I become a salaried junior dev. I'd like to tell those people that I openly welcome a day where I can confidently write a program spread across more than 10 component files. The key word is "confidently".
This weekend's project is smaller, more fun and more stylish. We will be designing a credit card validation interface. It can be as boring as a bunch of inputs with some labels slapped on them. Or it can be as flashy as a mock credit card with animations (this is the route I'll be taking). And where there is a need for validating data, there will almost always be regex. Ahhh yes, regex, that cursed amalgam of gibberish that somehow takes all your data and returns the one single field you need! We insult regex under our breath but we also begrudgingly admit that we need it in our lives.
As I am writing this blog I just received a link to an animation of a man building creatures in his lab. Its colorful and its cute. And it is written entirely in CSS! That people can be so inspired to do cool things like this is the motivation that keeps me wanting to learn and get better as a developer. For every to-do list that breaks my self-confidence and makes me question my future in the industry there is a credit-card validator project that reignites the spark. And if this bootcamp has been anything, its been a constant push-pull of emotions and self-evaluation.
