July Monthly Roundup

Dear reader, if you're thinking this is a horrible title for such a read, I am writing to tell you that I can't help it. You'd have to pardon me, just incase.

June - July 2022

I love to make plans a lot, every single day of my life and every event that occurs. I can't always help it, but jot down these little task on my journal, notebook or even on my mind.

In as much as I love to keep things in my life private, I'd share my July experience with you. I started the year as an intern in my university, working with my professor as a researcher, well yeah. It was fun, and a position where I learnt new and interesting topics every single day. It has been that way until the strike that affected Nigerian Universities, and somehow looks like it isn't coming off soon, had to put me out of work, for most of the time. If you're reading this, must have noticed that I am a software engineer. I do mostly backend stuff with Java (springboot/spring frameworks) and Node.js(express).

The Job Experience

The experience has been a bitter sweet type. I kid you not, whosoever is job searching and finally lands one, should be offered a therapy session to ease out from the stress and anxiety.

I've sent in several applications, open-source contributions, community events and the likes and yet there's nothing. Trust me, I had never had this experience in my life before.

On the positive side, I learnt a lot about crafting a near perfect resume, writing cover letters and getting out of my comfort zone to reach out to people. So far, it has been a good one, but the pain is too much.

Looking back to how I started the year, and where I am now, I can say I'm excited but not too, about my growth.

Stuffs I've Leant

I'll be sharing this in no order, as I can't wrap my head write now. Writing this post on my laptop. I'll try to elaborate in the nest way I can for certain topics, or habits.

• Next.js/React

Yes, I can boldly say this is one thing that July has blessed me with. I never enjoyed doing frontend development in the beginning. In fact, I hated the thought of building frontend applications. Not until I was forced to build my online portfolio. That alone was another hurdle in choosing the right framework, hosting, and what contents I should upload on there.

Settled for Next.js after doing my research. But most importantly, cos a senior friend I knew wanted me to help out with a project he had in hand at te time.

I was debating between writing next.js with javascript or with Typescript. See, the only time I laid my hands on Typescript was with angular, and that was about 4 months ago, didn't know shit about what I was doing. I just looked at docs and built my frontend application I was testing for my full-stack project.

I had to settle for Javascript, but looking at how much I've carried on my head, I can comfortably pickup Typescript where necessary.

• Learnt how to write optimal, standard Next.js application for production.

• How to setup dev environments to ensure strict software development cycles amongst developer teams.

• Getting familiar with the Next.js ecosystem

• Understand SSR with Next.js

• How Next.js works under the hood

I'd love to do a quick recap of how next.js works, and how you get your contents displayed.

Before I continue, in my experience I think the best way to host next.js applications should be with Vercel, AWS works as much that is if your team/you host on AWS. But it's really easy with Vercel and vercel fully optimizes for Next.js.

When your Next.js project is hosted, and a client wants to access the content on the page. Here's a working procedure:

• User visits your website
• The server then proceeds to generate a rendered HTML file that fetches all of the required data. || site displays no content, nothing is visible.
• The browser then renders your site and downloads all your js files || website is visible but ui is not interactive.
• Browser then executes the your js files, and your application is visible and ready for use by the client to interact with.

Built my blog and portfolio using Next.js and tailwindcss which is now my favorite css framework.

• Java

Got back to reading Java books, two of which I haven't completed. Practiced more data structures and algorithms, learnt more about core Java, it's API's and system designs. Getting my hands more on cloud tools, CI/CD. Likes of AWS Kubernetes, Docker, Jenkins, and Kafka.

Allow me to stop here, thank you.

Aloha❣

David