Over the last couple weeks, I’ve been working through Wes Bos’s Advanced React course. I’m about halfway through it now, and can say that the course is great. The main goal of course is to teach Next.js, GraphQL, Apollo, Prisma, and of course [React][react]. Since I had never used Next.js, GraphQL, Apollo, or Prisma, I was intrigued by the course. Now that I’m getting comfortable with GraphQL, I can say that I’m really enjoying the way Apollo integrates with it and find this workflow more natural than using Redux to handle state. It’s so clean and easy to add queries and mutations to components. These technologies offer some amazing capabilities and I’m enjoying getting familar with them. The wheels are spinning on the ways I can use these tools to build some cool software in the days ahead. Once I’m done with the course, I might publish a thorough review. So far, I can say that the course is well worth the price of admission.

IdeaListz

On top of the Advanced React course, I spent a lot of time diving deep into ASP.NET Core MVC. Building an Enterprise Application with ASP.NET Core MVC, a course on Pluralsight, was my primary resource. I’ve been using ASP.NET Core MVC for a while now, and much of the course was review, but hadn’t yet viewed this course. The course covers a lot of ground. My favorite part of the course was the coverage of Tag Helpers. Tag Helpers can be used to create reusable, component-like, objects that can be injected into your Razor to encapsulate some functionality. On top of the MVC course, I started reading Entity Framework Core in Action which goes deep on the best practices and techniques for using Entity Framework Core.

Finished

Pluralsight Course(s): Building an Enterprise Application with ASP.NET Core MVC

Book(s): Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and DevOps

Currents

Pluralsight Course(s): CQRS In Practice

Book(s): Entity Framework Core in Action

On the Next…

This week I started a new challenge for the month of November. The challenge for this month is to work on developing a new website, IdeaListz, each day of the month. I’ve written a lot about this web application and how I want to create it in the past. For those who are unfamiliar with the site, it will have functionality for creating lists of ideas. Users will be able to add and share their lists with the community. So far, I’ve been working on user registration. The development is going well so far. I’m going to be spending a lot of time in the weeks ahead on building out the app. I’m excited to be making progress on it each day. Right now, I’m using the concepts presented in the Advanced React course to build out a React frontend and a GraphQL backend.