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Episode 13: Quick Update: Jake Likes React

Published: Tue, Aug 8, 2023

Dude, check it out! In this totally rad podcast sesh, you got Seth Whiting, this mega experienced coder with like a decade of tech wizardry, and then there's Jake Pacheco, this chill barber turned code surfer riding the learning waves for 13 weeks. They're diving deep into React, man. Jake's stoked on how React vibes with him, especially after he got the lowdown on JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. He's all about Code Academy's React course, diggin' the hands-on code action over those vid tutorials. He's cruising through concepts like conditional rendering and mapping, and it's all starting to fit in the big picture, ya know?

The hosts are all about teamwork in the coding lineup. They're sharing tales of hooking up with Chelsea, this other coder shredding through JavaScript. They're high-fiving over helping each other carve through coding challenges. And they're laying it down that grasping the core logic of coding concepts is key to riding the gnarly learning curve. They're throwing in some tips for checking out documentation, suggesting newbie-friendly stops like W3Schools.

And hey, they're not just riding the wave, they're shaping it too! Seth and Jake are spilling the beans on crafting clean, efficient code. They're droppin' knowledge on the art of efficient code reviews, bro. They're tossing around the idea of "modular code," think of it like building legit components that work together like a killer squad. They're all about nailing that efficient vibe while being cool with different coding styles.

Wrapping it up, these dudes are pumped about their coding journey, ready to catch more React barrels and ride the coding currents. They're vibing on the energy of their listeners and even throwin' the idea of future collabs into the mix. Seth's leaving you with some stoked words, saying as your coding mojo grows, those initial bumps turn into a seriously tubular coding ride. Keep it cruisin', bro!

(Auto-Generated) Episode Transcript:

Seth Whiting: Hey everybody. I am Seth Whiting and I'm a developer from Portland, Maine, and I've been coding for about 10 years now.

Jake Pacheco: And I'm Jacob Pacheco. I am a barber from Augusta, Maine, and I've been coding for about 13 weeks now. I'm nice. Gonna start sounding, I'm gonna start sounding like one of those mothers that keeps.

Calling their kid X amount of months. Yeah. After a while, I need to start switching over to months. Like he's 15 years old.

Seth Whiting: You can stop.

Jake Pacheco: Yeah. Yeah. I'm 52 weeks in. Yeah. Yeah. Lucky 13. Yeah. Lucky 13, yeah. They don't build that floor for a reason, Seth On hotels.

Seth Whiting: Yeah. Anyways.

Interesting fact is Joey my oldest daughter, she can count really high, but for some reason she always skips 13. Not on purpose, she just like forgets that it exists. But yeah,

Jake Pacheco: It's Yeah, it's like a person that wears sunglasses 'cause their future is too bright. She's just ah, I don't need that shade.

I don't need that bad look. What are you talking about? My, my world does not include the number 13. Thank you very much.

Seth Whiting: Wait, I haven't heard that people don't wear sunglasses because their future is too bright. No,

Jake Pacheco: no. You wear sunglasses everywhere. You do because your future's too bright.

Yeah. Yeah. But she's just just a nonsensical no bad luck don't exist in my dojo,

Seth Whiting: yeah, exactly. That's what it's, but yeah, so I

Jake Pacheco: Good for her for, yeah. She saying she a positive. Yeah. Staying lucky. But yeah, me I've actually felt lucky lately because I've been learning React and I've been enjoying react quite a bit.

Nice. It feels a lot more and I think it really, okay. It feels a lot more approachable. I think that's probably because I have a bit of the foundation and I will not say I have a full foundation but a bit of a foundation of learning the JavaScript, H T M L and C s Ss first. Just so I understand what some of the things are, what are some of the things you're actually doing.

Yeah. But. Going into React is like a lot of fun so far. Like I'm actually enjoying it quite a bit. Nice. And it's starting to click and I'm sure like you've expressed what it is before when you express like what frameworks are and whatnot. But right now, like getting into it and doing it yourself, you really realize how much more.

How do I want to explain it? How much more cohesive, everything fits together. I guess would be a way to put it. It? Just the way the H T M L is written in the JavaScript, it's pretty intuitive and it makes sense why it would be where it is most of the time. And also the fact that you can inject your H T M L into your JavaScript if I was writing a I always get functions and variables and whatnot mixed up still.

Just 'cause I don't have a yeah, I don't, yeah. But say I wanted to be like, is this true about the user? If yes, then pop up this H T M L and if no, then pop up this H TM L or give them this picture or something like that. Is right. I guess I didn't realize that it would be that much handshaking, Uhhuh Yeah.

Where it just goes into itself or goes into the rest of it where HTML gets thrown into JavaScript and stuff like that. With that, I have a question because I haven't really Vice versa,

Seth Whiting: like the yeah. The JavaScript goes into the HTML and the HTML goes into the JavaScript and it's all it's one, one thing.

Yeah.

Jake Pacheco: Yeah. It's almost like you're like, I learned my ABCs at first to create one language. Is what it feels almost like, where it's like I, I have a base knowledge of these few things. And now I can actually string a sentence together and it actually like works.

Yeah. Which is really cool. One question with that though, your C ss s always separate, or is that right? No. So in No, that, that gets thrown in there too. I just haven't gotten to there yet. I've done J S X and then

Seth Whiting: A little bit more. Yeah. So the c s and JSS stuff is if you haven't done it yet, you, I don't know.

I don't know if they will do any of it during what you're doing, but, Have you in your like components or like in your in your J SS X, have you passed any props to any of your components? I'm trying to think of a common one, but basically like in your opening H T M L tag.

And this works in regular H T M L too. You have. Like after your tag, say Diviv, you just have like open angle, breaks, angle, bracket, and then the word diviv and then a space. And then before you close it out with the closing angle bracket. You can write like style equals, and then Yep.

Write your C Ss s and in regular H T M L, you would write all of your c s there. Not all of it, but like you could. Theoretically write all of your c s, per like H T M L tag, like within your H T M L. But in regular H T M L, you would write your style your C ss within that style tag, within the boundaries of quotation marks.

And J S X, you write them in an object context. So you have curly braces and then Yeah. Have like javascripty type c s like properties. So like I said, yeah, previously, like font size would be in Camel case instead of kebab case. Yeah. Yeah. If you're doing it in H T M L, You would do like style equals and then quotes and then font dash size and then, yeah.

Do it all like the c s way.

Jake Pacheco: Yeah I think I, yeah, I think I might have touched on it a little bit, but we just haven't really delved to like knee deep into it yet. Yeah. But yeah, I've been enjoying it quite a bit and it's been like pretty interesting. Just seeing again how they all go together and and it, it does it so seamlessly that it's a bit mind blowing, yeah. It's oh, this is really like intuitive and Yeah. It just works the way it is. Yeah. And a lot of times like I know with myself when I am working with Code Academy, I tend to. I'll read a bit of the beginning and then go to what the challenge is.

Then I'll read the rest of the prompt or whatever. To try to wrap my head around it, what it is that I'm actually working on. And what parts are important at the moment. I don't know if that's the right way to do it, but that's what I'm doing. And then I try to attack it without any, Looking back or anything.

I try to just do what the problem is and see if I can get there. And if there's any problems then, I'll maybe read back on that part and see if there's anything that stands out that might help me. And really I save it for Like the worst case scenario to look at the solution or look at the hint even.

Just because I want to be able to like, commit it to memory and try to, Remember what I already know. And even if it means that I write like kind of muddy code at first, where it's that's not exactly right, but it does the same thing and it actually does push the same answer out.

Then I feel good about myself that I remembered something in general. Yeah. And then I can look at the way that they might've written it or whatever, and it'll be like, oh, okay, so you can write it just like that too. That's another way to, yeah. Ma, many ways to skin a cat, which is a messed up saying gross.

Why would you say that? Gross. It's my second time saying it today. I was talking about building houses earlier 'cause I was at the land I, and yeah. I was like more than one way to skin a cat. And I thought, that's awful in my head that time too. But yeah.

Seth Whiting: Cool. So so you've been writing.

The J S X and you've been doing things like like conditionally showing H T M L like in, in like statements and stuff. Have you done anything like looping over the HTML or anything like that yet? Or like what A little vaccine kind

Jake Pacheco: of Yeah a little bit. To be fully transparent on the React course on code Academy, I am about, I don't know, 16 sections done on the first lesson, because the first lesson is pretty deep.

I did the whole lesson. The whole lesson plan is pretty deep. I worked on it for three hours one day and I was just like, Enjoying myself the whole time, but then I like go to like my syllabus to see what percentage I got done. 'cause I was like expecting it to be quite a bit and it was like 4%.

And I was like, oh man, this is they go deep into React. Yeah. But that's like exciting to me. And I like looked through 'em and not a lot of the things are locked on it. Which is what happens with like, when you just learn JavaScript and stuff like that, is they lock a few of the tests and plans and stuff like that.

So you learn the fundamentals, but there's some extra stuff that you're missing out on if you don't go pro. And with the react side of it, it seems like they give

Seth Whiting: you like a lot to

Jake Pacheco: learn. Yeah. So I'm pretty stoked about that. Just because. I don't know. It comes back and it's funny to say it because like we've done a full circle where I don't feel nearly as motivated to watch the videos and stuff.

And to follow along on my computer with my system someone else's like lesson planned for it. It's a lot more comfortable to just Just sit down and type codes and you're doing the lessons and then eventually you're done. Yeah. And it's nice to see the progress bar move, yeah, for sure. And know that no I wrote stuff that made sure that I knew what the heck this was talking about. Yeah. Yeah, we've, like I said we've come full circle and seth always right. I was right the whole time you called it, you're, yeah, he was right the whole time.

No yeah. Co Code Academy is yeah. It's killing it for me right now. I like it a lot. Yeah, and I'm enjoying their their react course quite a bit. But yeah, as far as what I've learned so far They did a whole thing on just JavaScript fundamentals, which I was pretty cool.

I thought that was pretty cool that they give you a refresher course on some of that stuff. And yeah, I flew through that, which was pretty cool. I was like, nice. Yeah. Okay, that's good. I knew a lot of that, if not all of it. Uhhuh. And then they do some stuff with the Like command prompt.

Or what do you guys use? Is it command prompt for Mac or what is it on you guys' end?

Seth Whiting: It terminal. All of them are like interchangeable, but Yeah. Terminal. Okay. Yeah. Command, prompt, terminal

Jake Pacheco: command prompt, blah, blah, blah, whatever. Shell PowerShell, whatever you're using.

But anyways they do a bit on that. At one point, if you're like me, you'll get to a point where you're typing something in and you'll press enter to make it run and see if it works. And it'll say it didn't work. And what it's doing is it's making you use command prompt to create a new file inside of a folder.

Okay. And a new folder inside of a folder and stuff. So like I, I typed to make my new folder inside of a folder. And I made the file first on accident. And, but I also had the folder there, but it said it was wrong because it came back with a file in the folder.

Seth Whiting: So then

Jake Pacheco: I'm like, trying to figure it out and I'm like like, why is it wrong?

It's technically, I just skipped a step and I did a okay it's like it's the file's where it belongs and the folder's where it belongs. So why is it telling me I'm wrong? You have to refresh the entire page and the entire sheet, like your actual webpage, you have to refresh. Yeah.

Also apparently, so it, and it'll work if you typed it in that time. Do each step individually. Just, for people if you're following along with our talks and our program and you're following along the way that I've been doing it, then. It's helpful to know that it's also very helpful that the Code Academy provides, their forums there.

'cause that's what I found it, the solution was in the forums. They were like, Hey, by the way, if you type anything wrong with this, then you have to refresh the whole thing. Oh, gotcha. Yeah. To square one, otherwise it's not going to work. Yeah. So yeah. So just heads up anyone out there for that. Yeah.

But yeah, so taught a few command prompt stuff things, which was pretty cool. And then they got into J S X, which like I said, I really enjoyed that. Do I think that I remember everything? I probably don't remember half of it, but we're getting there. But it, that being said, it was intuitive enough that it intuitive enough that it made sense.

Like when you And I might even, botch this a little bit where I believe it was like, you create your, what is it? You create your div and then you make an H one and then it, and then you write things in H T M L, I believe. Is how it went. And like things like that. It's it just seems very straightforward and very intuitive how you would write that.

And then the way that you would maybe insert, like I said, like some H T M L in a problem that you're writing in JavaScript is it's intuitive. It makes sense, you have to add an exclamation point. But it's, it made sense to me, at least with the, one of the things that I was doing, you like, do exclamation point the name and then, or if this exists, so exclamation point this then.

This happens. N this if this is true, n or er, sand ampersand uhhuh. This and then semi colon, or is that what are the two dots? I always get those. Is that a colon? Yeah. And then colon, and then another answer if it's false or whatever. So

Seth Whiting: When you do the the exclamation point, That's actually saying, yeah,

Jake Pacheco: not so that, yeah, I thought so.

I thought I had learned that in JavaScript where it's if you put an exclamation point before something, then it means not right. So that means that my true and false would be reversed. Yeah.

Seth Whiting: Yeah. So if you're saying like, if exclamation point exists, then you're checking for if it doesn't exist.

Yeah, then do something.

Jake Pacheco: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. But yeah, so I've been enjoying that quite a lot and it's been guessing me up to, to do more stuff with it and keep working on it. I just got to actually have it pulled up here, what lesson I'm on, just so people can actually follow along where we're at.

I just started the next it

Seth Whiting: says,

Jake Pacheco: Animal fun facts. In this project, we'll build a program that allows users to click an animal on the screen in order to have a fun fact pop up. Nice. Hey, you could do your lizards. Yeah, I could. So that is let me see here. 16% through the Learn React, and it's.

Right after advanced J S X. So I went through intro to J S X React, the virtual dom, and you read that's just an article. And then advanced J S X and now I'm at Animal Fun Facts, which is a project. So Nice. Yeah, that's where I'm at in, and

Seth Whiting: if you're definitely talking about that, then yeah.

Jake Pacheco: Catch up. What are you doing? Yeah. Don't listen to this podcast until you get there. No. Or do Just 'cause you like our voices. Yeah. Or if you're past

Seth Whiting: there, then stop listening until we catch up. Yeah,

Jake Pacheco: yeah. You're probably past this

Seth Whiting: or if you're doing a completely different like lesson than, yeah, this is just gonna

Jake Pacheco: be really boring for you or something.

I don't know. I don't know what to tell you. Hopefully we'll put some kind of gotta luck, something in the description to tell him like, Hey, this is what Jake is learning right now so they can follow along. Yeah. But if we don't feel like doing that and if we're feeling tired from work and stuff, then maybe, you just catch up, man.

But yeah. But yeah. Cool. Yeah. Cool, cool. So that's where I'm at right now. Yeah I was actually, it was funny, I was out with my parents today out at the land where we're building and We were ta I was talking about programming and stuff. My mom like, haphazardly, like jokingly said oh yeah, maybe I'll learn how to do that.

Just to that I can just work from home or whatever. I was yeah. She's I don't know if I could just do the bare minimum, like a basic thing that I could learn and stuff, and I was like, It made me think of WordPress and I was like, maybe look into a little bit of WordPress stuff.

'cause that might, like it might be a thing. It's not that it's like super simple or anything, but it might be, it seems like it would be a bit more user friendly a bit. Maybe would

Seth Whiting: you say that yeah, I mean like you, you don't need to learn quite as much about The like, logic and yeah.

You don't need to write algorithms much like you'll Yeah. Rarely run into a case where you need to write a, like a legit like algorithm. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, it would be a bit more straightforward a bit, yeah. Yeah.

Jake Pacheco: Yeah. Cool. Yeah, I was just, I just thought that was funny. I was like, huh.

I was like and she's a really quick learn too, so I was like, yeah, I bet. I bet she could figure that out like pretty easily. And. Pretty decent about that.

Seth Whiting: I wonder if there is any WordPress thing on

Jake Pacheco: Code Academy, how to thing? Yeah. I'm sure that WordPress has put out their own thing, right?

Like to like, teach

Seth Whiting: people how to use it. They definitely have like documentation everything, everything is documentation, like you could learn, react from the react documentation, but it's not a great way to learn

Jake Pacheco: if you're, yeah, I was gonna say like a normal person. Anytime I've looked at Anytime I've looked at like documentation Firefox has a really great documentation on JavaScript and a few other things.

And it's yeah. Like anytime I've looked at 'em, I, it feels like I've gone from like a kitty pool to like the deep end of a divers pool. Oh no, I've gone too far. I don't know what this says.

Seth Whiting: And actually just a little tip if you are looking up like documentation on HTML and CSS and blah, blah, blah, like I just googled just like c s grid, which is just a thing in C S Ss that you can, learn about Mozilla, like the people who made Firefox have Yeah. Like a resource for all H T M L and C S Ss stuff. And even JavaScript stuff and basically just like just foundational documentation for every, everything, H T M L C SS and JavaScript.

But also, and they come up on Google usually as one of the top, like two or three hits for whatever you're, if ever you're Googling like a basic. C S H T M L or JavaScript thing. So Mozilla has theirs, but then there's another one called W three Schools and W three is Worldwide Web.

And it's put out by the W three C, which is the worldwide Web Con consortium, which is like the people who decide like what goes into browsers and what doesn't. Like they, they like set the standards and stuff. I've found that their documentation on this stuff is much more like easy to wrap your head around than Mozilla's.

Yeah. Okay. Good to know. So if I ever see oh, Mozilla has one and W three schools has one, I'm always going to W three schools. It's just Very straight to the point. Here's what it is,

Jake Pacheco: awesome. Thanks for the tip. 'cause that's something that I definitely think is helpful because like I said, like anytime I've looked at the Mozilla stuff, I'm like, oh my word.

Yeah. There's so much stuff and I don't understand any of it. You know what I mean? Yeah.

Seth Whiting: They don't really get to the point as well. And that always annoys me when I get to theirs. Yeah.

Jake Pacheco: It seems a bit like I, I've run into that a few times with different I don't know if you're gonna call it documenta.

I think you would documentation on this stuff with like even through code academies set up and stuff, like it's decent, but some of it is a little bit written abstract in the sense where it's oh, okay, but like, how is this pertaining to what exactly I'm writing and stuff?

And it sometimes can be a little bit. Harder to swallow that pill, so yeah, that's definitely a really helpful tip because everywhere that I see always preaches, mozilla's documentation. 'cause it's, I assume 'cause it's so vast, like they have so much documentation.

But that's cool. About the W two

Seth Whiting: schools. Yeah. And not not to dis Mozilla. It's just I always I always go to W three. I just find their like format easier to get to the bottom of what I'm looking for.

Jake Pacheco: Yeah. Yeah, that's it. And I'm sure like if Mozilla was the thing that you happened upon, that had the exact thing that you're looking for then I'm sure where you're at, Seth, like you'd be able to just pick it up and be like, yeah,

Seth Whiting: This is this. Then, yeah.

Jake Pacheco: I get what you mean though, and I have just easier to swallow.

Seth Whiting: And I have used Mozilla's before yeah. And it's not like I would never use it or anything.

It's just like I, I tend to yeah. I tend to go for W three schools

Jake Pacheco: a lot more. Yeah. We've talked a lot about different people's learning styles and how everyone's a bit different with like, how they absorb a thing. And you tend to be more receptive to W three schools, which is cool.

Yeah. That's cool. 'cause I didn't even know it existed until then. Yeah.

Seth Whiting: Cool. Yeah, that's really cool to know that like, Where you are. Like you're getting into react, like you're understanding it, it's clicking, it's like feeling good. So that's awesome. And yeah, keep doing what you're doing, get to the end of it.

And I, I think, if you're only 16% of the way, it sounds like you've already learned, like some really useful stuff. And I think you're just gonna. Keep doing that same kind of thing. I think like once you get to you've already gotten to like conditional stuff and like I said, like everything is like loops and conditional, and JavaScript and in Yeah, react and in any language, everything just boils down to loops and conditionals.

So yeah, you've

Jake Pacheco: already, we got into some. Yeah we got into some like map and filter stuff also. Oh, cool. Which was cool to see again. I was like, oh, cool, I get to do this again. Yeah. Yeah. And then I don't know what these are called when you do a dot math dot map dot filter.

What are those called real quick? Because I forget what they're called. Do you know what they're called? I don't know if there's a word for the in total. Is there?

Seth Whiting: Yeah. You're basically doing like a looping function on an array. So like you Okay. Every array has like, Things that you can do with it.

So you could do yeah. Dot length, that's like a property of an arrays. Like it, it's a property that just returns the length of the array and then it like it also comes fully stocked with A bunch of different looping functions. Like for each and map and reduce and filter. Yeah. And all of that kind of stuff.

Jake Pacheco: Yeah. So we've been learning how to, or I've been learning. We've been Yeah. There's more than one of me in here. Everyone. And you just found out. No, but I, yeah, I've been learning. I like saying weave. I the royal, we stick with it. We've been learning. Yeah. The royal, we have been learning and see, I'm with, I'm in this, I'm in this with you guys, is what I'm saying.

You guys, and hopefully girls too. We're in this together. But anyways. I've been learning about all that stuff in J S X and how it's written in React and everything, and I've been, yeah that's pretty much covers everything I've been learning lately though and Yeah. Yeah.

I'm excited to learn more with it and I was excited when I got to the end of the past lessons. So advanced J S X at the end of it, they're like, don't worry if you don't remember all of this. We're going to be going over all of the same stuff a lot. Yeah. And I was just like, okay, good. Yeah. Yeah.

Just because Yeah, for sure. I feel like that's how it really sticks is I have to write it like 50 times before I do it. Yeah. Be before I really know. But it was interesting the other day. Also just side note, I was working on coding this at, this is that three hour coding spree. I went on Uhhuh and.

Chelsea decided to like work on it a little bit herself. Just she's still working on the JavaScript course in Code Academy. And she got to something that I had done before. It, you'll see very quickly, if someone asks you, okay, if you're at the point where I'm at right now and someone asks you about the eight ball application that they have.

You make uhhuh good luck. You know what I mean? Or, but but that being said, I remembered how to do it. So like I was able to then sit with her and be like I believe it's written like this. If she really had a question that she was like, okay, Jake, I'm stuck. I need help with this, then I was able to actually explain to her what it was and what it does and stuff, because also she would write it and she'd be like, yeah, this is right. But I don't understand what it did, and I was actually able to explain what the function did and what the things are doing. Yeah. Nice. Which was really cool. That was a kind of a high point in that night, I think, where I was just like, oh wow I'm actually learning some of this stuff and not just not just trying to learn, but actually it's sticking, yeah.

Seth Whiting: It's not just like in school, like you're just like memorizing something for a test. It's like you're like understanding something and yeah,

Jake Pacheco: yeah. That the ins and outs of why it works between the two. Yeah. Yeah. It always drove me crazy.

This is another side note, and I, it's not very important but it's just how I am as a learner. Backstory with me through high school, like a C was great. A d was like, yeah, that's, that seems about right. And an F was like, yeah, I expected that. You know what I mean? I was not a good student at all, Uhhuh.

And it wasn't because I was in up partying or anything like that. I was, I. Aging myself again, but like straight edge without the potential. But but I, yeah, so I was just like, sober dude and like that I haven't changed much, but, so I just didn't do anything crazy or anything.

Didn't party. I was just a skater kid and I just didn't have any interest in school. Pretty much uhhuh. So all this to say, After school, I realized that my form of learning is I have to fully understand why something is doing something. To the point where I understand why I'm even learning the thing.

If I have no point of learning the thing, then I'm not going to learn it. It might, my brain just doesn't it, it doesn't adhere. It doesn't stick, but if you can see the point,

Seth Whiting: then you like learn the crap out of it. That's exactly the type of person that you are.

Jake Pacheco: That's just how I am.

Yeah, like it's if you need to know why Johnny has eight watermelons, I'm just gonna be angry at you for asking. 'cause Johnny's a fiction I don't care about, don't care about John and I don't care about his watermelons. And, all of us have a little bit of libertarian in us and I have a little bit, and I think that I should keep my nose out of his business.

Anyways, poor Johnny just wants to have his watermelon leave him alone.

But, so that's very much the logic that I had. Imagine 12 year old Jake saying this to a teacher angrily. Yeah. And that's why he got F's. Yeah. But then after school I realized that I am, it's weird because you go from being in school or I went from being in school thinking I was like almost borderline, like learning disabled.

I was like, man, I'm not. I am lost in the sauce and then get outta school and be able to pick up things really easily if I cared about them. Yeah. Building cars was really easy and and computers and a bunch of other stuff like, came pretty easy to me because I would like actually apply myself to it.

All this to say that was a big side tangent. I, when I was in hair school, it became one of those things where when you color hair, there isn't an exact science. And it drove me up a wall that there wasn't an exact science. I'm like, okay, so how do I get this color red? And they're like, oh you just mix it together.

And does that look about right? And I'm like, yeah, but that's not, it's gonna look different when it's applied and then it's gonna change color a little bit after it's applied and after it's dried and everything like that. And they're like, yeah, but it's just not, you just have to give it your best shot.

Yeah. And I'm like I was like, Okay, this is where I'm done learning this. I was like, 'cause I like, I was so angry that there wasn't like a, an exact science to anything that they were talking about. And I still to this day doubt that it's because there isn't an exact science to it, but that they just didn't know.

Is what I think, and that bothers me. Yeah. And it, so when I get to do this like coding and write something, and I know exactly why it is doing what it's doing is, ugh, my word. It's my favorite thing. And it's applicable because it's okay, now I can apply this to these things that I'm building.

Yeah. Yeah. Is exciting and fulfilling and it hits all of the right notes with me. Yeah. Yeah. And the way my brain works, so Awesome. Yeah. I'm. So I'm pretty excited that I've I've crossed that threshold into being like, or at least a little bit, my, my big toe is over the threshold of being like, oh, man, like I actually get why this does this.

I didn't just write this thing willy-nilly not knowing exactly what it's doing. Yeah. And the only thing that I do catch myself doing sometimes is I'll write. Because they teach you like old ways of writing something and then they'll teach you the new way of writing it. Where it's like much shorter and easier to write.

And that kind of annoys me because my brain goes write it the old way. And it's I don't wanna write it the old way. I wanna write it the easy way. But I only remember the old way because it was hard to remember.

Seth Whiting: If it works,

Jake Pacheco: it works though. Yeah. But that's what gets me into the the part of life where Seth looks it and goes, and that's why I, he is a junior developer and I'm a senior developer.

Yeah. You know what I mean, though? Yeah. I wanna be able to write, concise, clean, code. You know what I mean? Yeah. But we'll get there. And at least, I, I, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna use the same at least there's multiple ways to peel an orange.

I'm not gonna use the same one

Seth Whiting: again. Yeah. Two times is enough.

Jake Pacheco: Two times is enough for today. My heart can barely take it, but yes. Cool. Yeah, that was quite a Jake tangent. Sorry about that. Everyone.

Seth Whiting: Yeah. What was the very last thing that you were talking about though? I'm blanking out. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. So if you wrote it like the old way or like the non-con concise way, like it would still work and I, I do this at work, like at my current job, like where. Whenever. So the way that you, like day to day as a developer on a team, you'll push your code up via gi which we've talked about a bunch.

And then before it gets merged into the actual project, you'll have the other developers on the team just take a look at it and just lent like another pair of eyes and just say Oh, this looks like it might not run the way that you're thinking that it will. And or and this is what I'm getting at.

Hey you wrote it this way and it's taking five lines, but did you know that you could just write this in one line and like a lot of the time, that's like the, like something that I just like do naturally is just I can see code, and see how it could be like more concise.

But and that's the kind of like comments that I usually leave on people's code is Hey this all looks like it will run well. But did you know that you could cut out several lines? And it's not even that's it's way more valuable to do what other people do to me, where it's like, Hey, this is really concise and everything, but you're missing like, like a pretty, pretty important thing here.

And I'm like, oh crap. Yeah, it's so embarrassing. But yeah, so basically it's just If you wrote something in like the non-con, concise way and like you gave it to another developer it would be, it wouldn't be like you're an idiot or anything. They would just be yeah. Oh yeah, this works.

But like you, yeah, you could make it like a little cleaner if you did this,

Jake Pacheco: yeah. Yeah. So they're not gonna shame you for it. Yeah. I assume like in, I assume in programming and stuff, there's not really a ton of shame, but when you do something wrong right. Or

Seth Whiting: something like that, is there, I guess the only exception there would be like, if you wrote something that like I'll kinda on one team where I was working with two, we needed, we desperately needed senior developers on the team, but we got junior developers and it was like really frustrating. When I was doing some of the code review, I saw some blocks of code that literally did nothing. They just were like completely rendered useless by some other code that they wrote.

And I was like, oh my God. What am I dealing with here?

Jake Pacheco: And they probably spent hours writing that. I don't know. I don't know. Oh,

Seth Whiting: that's rough. I don't know. But that's the only kind of, that's different, like exception. Yeah. That's a little different. But yeah if you write code and you use like a for loop instead of a for each or a map or whatever, nobody's gonna be like, oh, that's, that's bad or anything like it works.

Everybody knows that a for loop will loop and it will work, you

Jake Pacheco: know. Yeah, you just spent extra time doing something that you could have done a lot easier and in the future. And that's what I think is helpful with what you do what you've said you've done with someone who you've seen their code and you're like, oh, this is written a little bit long.

You've wrote the long form of it. Here's a shorter way. It's not so much a correction in the sense where you should fix this right now and this isn't a proper way of doing it. Yeah. It's more of Hey, for future reference Yeah. This will help you out. In taking less time writing code.

Yeah. And that's what I

Seth Whiting: tell them is Feel free not to do anything. I just wanted to let you know that you could do it this way if you wanted to, in the future or now if you want to, yeah, if you have time, you could totally rewrite it this way if it sounds like appealing enough to you, but that's, yeah.

Yeah. I always like my code and like the, I don't know, I guess my code to be as concise as possible. That's just like a thing that I like and, 'cause I think that it looks. Looks nicer and is like kind of nicer to work with. Yeah, and like I like to tell people, tips and tricks of like how I do that kind of thing.

Yeah. And so that they can do it too. And if they want to, If they want to do it too, they can. And if they don't want to, it's, I'm not gonna refuse to work on the project or anything. It's totally fine. Yeah.

Jake Pacheco: So yeah, it's, yeah I get that entirely. That's that's, it's, yeah it's funny because that's very similarly similar to how I work with, like others on most projects with whatever else.

It's like with the building the houses thing, I'm like, this is what I'm doing and this is why I'm doing it. And it's, I. Kind of the best way of doing it. That's how I've, from everything that I've researched, but also if you don't wanna do it, I don't, it's not my, not my position to be like, Hey, do it like this.

It's yeah, both get the thing done, but this way is a little bit more easy or might be more efficient in the long run or something. Yeah. That makes sense. And I think that's that's decent of you for doing that, Seth. Kudos. Truly kudos. You could be a punk about it.

It could be a punk about it, and Yeah. But it sounds like you're just trying to help out, which is good. Yeah. Yeah.

Seth Whiting: Yeah. Because I don't know, it's just like over the years I've picked up a lot of like little tips and tricks that like, help with that kind of thing.

Make cleaner code and Yeah. That's, I like to if I were, because I like that. Because I like to write code. That way if anybody has any tips or tricks for me for how to write like shorter, like more concise lines of code, then I'm all ears. I'm always like, yeah, like I, I just learned a new trick the other day and I was like I wanted to share it with the the other guys and yeah.

And I did. And I was like, Hey, this is a cool thing. Check

Jake Pacheco: it out. That's awesome. And I think that's, we're about to dig a little into psychology a little bit, but I think that's how most people should be. I think that some people get stuck in the sense of being like, Nope, I'm right.

You're wrong. This is the only way a thing. When it's I think that you you have a lot more to gain in life when you're fluid with the idea of things that, you know. If you're like I know this to be true right now. But also like I'm free for other interpretations or other ideas.

Yeah. With code or with anything else. It's like I think that being stuck in one way of doing something is not the

Seth Whiting: way to do things. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. And I like that about the guys on my team, like the other day, I. Introduced like a trick to one of the other guys. And he like, liked it so much that he like went through and did a find and replace for all of the places that he was doing it, like the long way.

And he ended up doing it the short way. He was like, oh, I wanna do that. And then he submitted a pr, a pull request. That's what a PR is. And a pull request is like what I was talking about. You push up your code for review. For other people to look at before you merge it into like the main project that you do that via something called a poll request.

It's basically a request for other people to look at it before you pull it down into the main project. Cool. So he like submitted a version of the code with everything rewritten the more concise way. 'cause he was like stoked about learning the new thing and I was like, oh, that's awesome.

Jake Pacheco: Yeah. Yeah, that's wicked cool. And it's cool that also to elaborate on that, it's really cool that you guys care about what your code looks like, even if it doesn't hurt the end user. In looking any other way, if someone's just proud of their worksmanship their craftsmanship with this, it's that's awesome.

'cause that's, yeah. It's the things that you don't see with most things that, people build or work on or whatever. It's the things you don't see that kind of make the difference between something that's super quality and something that just anyone could put together. Yeah.

You know what I mean? It's a it's, I think it's a, it's, it's going against the other side of this conversation where it's yeah, it's okay to write it either way, but also it's We should have pride in our work no matter what we're working on. And it's cool to have that much pride to be like, Hey, you know what?

I'm going to try to make this the best that I possibly can. Yeah. That way if anyone else touches this code, it's an easier Yeah, an easier road for them,

Seth Whiting: Yeah, exactly. And also it makes for like more quote unquote maintainable code. So if Yeah. Yeah. If there's like a bug somewhere, it's like easier to find it,

Jake Pacheco: yeah. You're not looking at a sheet with 5,000 blocks. Yeah. Or something of like random list. And that's another thing

Seth Whiting: with like with the the don't repeat yourself stuff. Like the dry code, where yeah. If something is wrong with the button, you only have to change it in the button file, the Yeah.

Component that doing step that makes your code more maintainable is like always worth it,

Jake Pacheco: yeah. I forget if you've used the phrasing before, but would you call it like modular code? Like building it, like modular, like this is a piece that does this action and therefore I have it separated in its

Seth Whiting: own thing.

Yes. Yeah. I mean that, that is definitely what it is. Yeah I don't know if I've used. That word before, but that

Jake Pacheco: is, I probably just made it up maybe. I don't know.

Seth Whiting: No, that's a word that people use a lot. Okay, cool. Yeah.

Jake Pacheco: Yeah. Oh, neat. Hey, look at me. Yeah.

Web developer Jake Kachka. But but Cool. Yeah, I was just curious 'cause that's what it sounds like. It's it's modular, so it's if you have a problem with this one piece, then you just fix that one piece. Yeah. Instead of having to go through and rebuild the whole. Structure, to make it work around that piece or whatever.

Seth Whiting: Go and edit like 50 buttons in 50 different places, yeah,

Jake Pacheco: yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Or, yeah. I just imagine like someone's clicking through your. Your app and all of a sudden they get to a red button and they're like, they've all been blue to this point.

What the heck? It would matter that much, but still so cool. Have it just like a mystery to someone. Why? Why is this button red? What's the difference? Anyways, they go crazy.

Seth Whiting: So yeah it's cool to know like where you're at. I'm glad that you're like, enjoying it, that you're learning so much.

And like I said, as you go along or you could wait until you're done with the whole thing but like you can apply all of this stuff to like your Keeper app. Like keeping track of your reptiles and everything, and that, that'll be awesome. For you to like, 'cause if you have, like your baby, that you're working on, like you're project that you own and like you, you're making it because you wanted to, you like, you had the idea and everything.

That's gonna be like a really good learning thing for you. 'cause you're gonna be, Doing it because like you're invested in it and learning Yeah. A lot as you go. Yeah. Yeah. So that's cool. Yeah. And maybe someday you can help me out on one of my projects and I've yeah, that's secretly my, my what is the Not motivation, but

Jake Pacheco: the ulterior motive.

Seth Whiting: No, my agenda, my secret agenda, yeah. For teaching you this stuff is so I can get like the the extra labor out of you.

Jake Pacheco: Free labor. Just yeah. Put this free labor

Seth Whiting: until it starts making money and then maybe I'll pay you like a couple bucks. A penance. Yeah.

Jake Pacheco: Yeah, here's your, here's some money.

Buy yourself a soda kid.

Seth Whiting: But yeah, if I could loan myself, I would totally have a version of me that's just like out there writing code all the time so that I don't have to like, like basically just so that I have the time to do that. So having you as my clone, just writing stuff while I'm, like writing stuff that I'm like, like I have to do and not because I want to do it.

That kind of thing. Yeah.

Jake Pacheco: Yeah. I dunno. That's my I'm I'm excited that, that prospect, that sounds sick. Just the, in the sense of. Because I imagine you know exactly how whatever you wanna build is going to work. Just I'm sure you know how what I wanna build will work also, but if you've thought of these ideas before and you're like, no, this is how this is gonna work, this is how it would be written and everything.

Yeah. Then it'd be a really cool Kind of test to see if it's okay did he write this? And then also even if I did get it right, to have you be able to be like, Hey, Jake, by the way, you could have written this way this way, and this way. And it would've made it shorter or whatever like that.

I feel like that'll be like super helpful when we get to that point. I feel like we're still a ways off of that, but I'm excited that the idea

Seth Whiting: Yeah. Yeah. Be like, Same workflow that I was talking about where like you are submitting poll requests and I would just look them over and see this looks good.

Or like this particular part could be, written differently or In a way that works. Yeah. Yeah.

Jake Pacheco: It's being like it's like being a very, a junior developer.

Seth Whiting: Yeah. But yeah, like you I think the way that it would be is like you do all the Code Academy stuff and then you do like your own project, and then once you've done your own project, like you, you'll have all the context for these are how components kind of work together.

And here's how they make an actual thing. And then once you've done that once, then I think at that point, like it would be like, it wouldn't be that big of a leap to start working on a, another project, that like like with me, like work. Yeah. Yeah, of course.

Not that you would have to. Yeah. And not that it's only if you're like super into it or whatever, and I've got a good half dozen to a dozen ideas that I've like always wanted to work on and just haven't had the time. So it would be really cool to nice, not only have you be working on them, but What was I gonna say?

I totally just totally lost that thought. We,

Jake Pacheco: we'd be able to publish them

Seth Whiting: together. Yeah. But oh yeah. So yeah. But it would be,

Jake Pacheco: mine not only would like Yeah,

Seth Whiting: no. Not only would stuff be getting done, but I tend to start things a lot and then just put them on the back burner and do something else or not do anything.

Yeah. I just tend to start things and then I have so many fire based projects that I've started and just they're just sitting there and that kind of thing. But like to have somebody else. Be working on something with me would be awesome because it would be like, okay, if I'm not working on this, then like this other guy.

Is gonna be let down or

Jake Pacheco: whatever, something, Yeah. Yeah, exactly. It, it's really similar to the podcast what I was saying about that. Exactly. It's like it helps me because it's no, I have to learn some stuff before I get on the podcast again. Otherwise, I'm not gonna have anything to

Seth Whiting: talk about.

The accountability aspect of it. Yeah. Yeah,

Jake Pacheco: yeah, definitely. Yeah. And. Yeah, I'm excited at the prospect of that. Just know that a hundred percent that I'm like 100% in. That's super cool. Exciting to even think about working on something with you and Yeah. Like I, I know that I'll probably learn a lot at that point as well, which I'm really excited

Seth Whiting: about.

Yeah. Even if it doesn't go anywhere, like you could totally put it on like a resume, and yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Finish Code Academy by next week and

Jake Pacheco: we'll, oh yeah. Boo going. No problem. Yeah. Sweet. Yeah. I, yeah, that was a kind of a shorter episode today, but that was because I, it was more of, more or less just a check-in.

Yeah. And. I appreciate you guys sticking with us and stick with it and we'll be here to talk to you the whole way. Yeah.

Seth Whiting: Hopefully you're, thank you, Seth. The, hopefully you, listeners are like in a similar place like it, it would be awesome if you were, following along and doing the same stuff, but from.

As evidence of this podcast, like once you get into React, it's like things start feeling pretty good. I think

Jake Pacheco: yeah, definitely. Yeah, definitely much more. It feels better than it has the whole time, other than when I started writing like HTML and stuff. But that was just 'cause it was like, oh yeah, just write this in the things, yeah. But, yeah. Yeah. Yeah I'm excited that, to be encouraged by that, to keep

Seth Whiting: going with that. And if you're in like H T M L and c s and like vanilla JavaScript still just know that It gets better

Jake Pacheco: and it all changes also. 'cause it's not like right now you're working with the concept of writing three separate files.

With the idea that they'll all come together in a compiler and then be spat out on a screen when it really, like when you're working on. In React, you're writing it all at once. And you just need to have the basic ideas of all of the the three other things and it just comes together.

Learning React isn't a, it doesn't, or at least it doesn't feel to me, like a massive learning thing. It's, if you've gotten to this point and you're starting to learn, react, then you've. Gotten out of a lot of the mud, I feel like. Yeah. Where it's like you're driving these ideas that are absolutely new concepts and this is you're just reworking all your old concepts Yeah.

That you've already learned, which is like really comfortable and really exciting. Yeah. And I'm sure there'll be new concepts I've learned too, but it's it's exciting to be at this point. I'm excited about it anyways. Yeah. Yeah.

Seth Whiting: Yeah. Cool. All. Thanks everyone for listening. Thanks, Jake, for talking and thank you.

And we'll check in next week and maybe have some, like a more like conceptual stuff to talk about, like a more like topic based conversation as opposed to more of just like a check-in kind of thing. But we'll probably do we'll definitely do a check-in, but We might do both kind of thing, but

Jake Pacheco: cool.

Yeah, definitely, as always. All righty, well keep

Seth Whiting: swimming. Keep swimming, keep at it. Cool.

Jake Pacheco: Alrightyy. Thanks again. Have a good one, guys and girls and everyone else.

Seth Whiting: All right. See you.