Here we go:

Redux is a framework agnostic state management library. If you’re thinking about trying out Vue, or already using Vue with Redux, Vuex is probably a better state management library for maintaining performance, Here are some things to know about the two, so you can compare:

REDUX:

Actions:

Redux relies on actions: objects with a ‘type’ property and the minimum number of other properties and values that are necessary to explain the action. The only way to manipulate your state is to use the store.Dispatch() method which takes in a type (your action object) and a payload(which sends data from your application to your store). If the action isn’t recognized and no change is dispatched, the state is defaulted to the old state.

Reducers :

Reducers are pure functions (with pure functions you can guarantee that the same input will always result in the same output and do not mutate the input or create any side effects) that are used to implement how the next state is calculated from the current state and the action.

Each reducer manages its own part of the global state. State logic can be managed by breaking down your reducers to correspond to smaller sub-pieces of a state. These reducers can then be combined to one root reducer to manage all of your applications state. The redux store saves the complete state tree returned by the root reducer.

Store:

The store is the single source of truth and holds the whole state tree. In truth, it is just an object. To change the state, you must dispatch an action to it. In Redux, there is only one store, and one root reducing function, similar to having a root component in React. You never add a store, you only split the root reducer into smaller reducers that work on different parts of your state tree. You can add a change listener called subscribe to check anytime an action is ‘dispatched’ and your state tree may have changed.

FYI, you can bind Redux and Vue.js, just keep in mind that according to some, it is not necessarily the best fit for Vue.js. This is because Redux replaces the state object on every update. Though Redux is framework agnostic, it was created with React in mind. React is different from Vue in the way it processes updates: React renders a virtual DOM then calculates the most optimal DOM operations to make the currently rendered DOM match the new Virtual Dom. But it has no way of knowing whether a particular component needs to re-render or not based on the new data. Vue instances keep track of which bits of data they depend on to render. These instances automatically register what needs to re-render when the data changes.

VUEX:

Similar to Redux, Vuex is also inspired by Flux. However, unlike Redux, Vuex mutates the state rather than making the state immutable and replacing it entirely like with Redux’s ‘reducer’ functions.

This allows Vue.js to automatically know which directives need to be re-rendered when the state changes. Instead of breaking down state logic with specialized reducers, Vuex is able to organize its state logic with stores called modules.

Mutations:

Rather than actions, the only way to change the state tree in Vuex is with Mutations. Mutations require a type and handler. The type is a string name that acts as the key, and the handler is a function body. The mutations can be assigned to modules with a corresponding slice of the state. For small apps, this might seem tedious, but the benefits are that (particularly for larger apps) you will have one place where you will be able to see all of the possible ways that the state can change. This makes debugging much more convenient. Also, note that these are always synchronous to ensure that the state isn’t dependent on the timing and order of unpredictable (asynchronous) events.

Actions:

In Vuex, we also have actions: these are functions that dispatch (communicate changes to the store) our mutations. These can be asynchronous and receive the store instance as their first argument.

Actions do not mutate the state directly, but only commit the mutations. These can also be used to make asynchronous state changes. Keep in mind that the actions support the same payload format and object-style dispatch as mutations (i.e. your arguments for dispatch look the same as in a commit).

Store:

Like Redux, Vuex also has a store. This is the center of every Vuex application. This store holds the entire state, but it is not like a plain global object. Vuex stores are different because when components get state from the store, these components can reactively and efficiently update ‘whenever the store’s state changes. The store’s state can only be changed by committing mutations.

Overall, Vuex was really built to take advantage of what makes Vue unique. But for anyone thinking of moving over Vue, there is a caveat. For one, Vue doesn’t yet have the support, resources, and wide spread adoption of other frameworks like React. Having said that, Vue makes serious efforts to have lots of functionality right out of the box so getting started on your project is a more straightforward experience than setting up with React.

Happy New Year!! Due to the timing of the holidays, our break split the course into a shorter 5 week “junior” portion with a 1 week break, and then another week of being the “junior” cohort before jumping into the “senior”/ 2nd portion immediately after. It’s a strange feeling being in this limbo period and feeling like you’ve completed the first half but not being quite ready for the second half.

Per usual, we hit the ground running after the new year with a team project. It was definitely different working on a group as opposed to just pair programming with someone. I spent the first two days fearing merge conflicts but being surprised at how organized our team was! I doubt I’ll be this lucky in the future.

The next part of our week was spent with a new team iterating over another group’s project. It’s hard to say which project I learned more from. It was immediately understandable why documentation and commenting are so important!!

This was also the last week we spent with the “senior” cohort. I can’t believe the time has gone by so quickly. I will seriously miss this group and am so excited to see them moving on!

Lessons learned for this week were:

• Documentation, commenting, and keeping code organized are really, really important for anyone who will inherit your code. Seriously.
• Working with the google maps API is a little bit confusing and fun at the same time.
• I am also really excited for the coming week, when we finally get started on our production projects.

Looking forward to the following week!!

• We had our ugly sweater/ black tie Christmas party. It was really fun! And I was surprised that so many alumni and friends of students came to partake in the festivities.
• We learned about implementing and working with databases
• We learned about testing, implemented some unit testing and integration testing into our learning modules
• My cohort started using lunch times to have mini-study- sessions to refresh on previous topics and fill in any knowledge gaps

Last Saturday was the start of our solo-projects, which I, unfortunately, did not take advantage of my free Sunday to work on, using that day to prepare for my presentation, or rather, Tech Talk, as Codesmith calls them. My talk was titled ‘ES 6 Features You Might Not Know’, I’ll probably go over it again as a blog post in the near future.

Week 6 was especially difficult. For my solo-project I ended up using my time to try to understand React a little better and use what we’ve learned so far. In an effort to combat my ever-permanent indecisiveness, I decided to make a personalized web app that would help you choose where to eat for lunch based on your own preferences. This ended up being far more difficult to accomplish in two days than I had anticipated. Especially because I am procrastinator and the solo-project and my Tech Talk were due on the same day.

We also had one last unit on security, which ended up being really fun and I wish I’d had more time to complete the unit.

We spent Thursday reviewing and preparing for our assessment and Friday was spent taking our assessment before the Christmas Break.

Some lessons learned for this week were :

1. Be aware of your scope. Some things were just not possible to complete within two days. There’s a lot that I did not yet fully understand, and it was really kicking my butt the day our projects were due.
2. I am still dealing with imposter syndrome and I think that’s okay.

And now, a much needed break to sleep, eat, and hang out with some family.

That’s all for now. Happy Holidays and a very Happy New Year!!

Here’s a quick example: Let’s say you’re making a new website and making HTML pages is something you do pretty often. You can create a snippet for your HTML page and call it boilerhtml so that the next time you need to set one up you just start typing boilerhtml , hit Tab and there is your boilerplate. Or perhaps you hate wasting your time writing out for loops when you are coding. So go to your editor’s Snippets menu. You will probably have to pick out which language you’re going to be working in and your editor should open up a JSON file for your language.

You will start with setting up your For Loop method and keep in mind that basically everything must be in quotes. Your prefix is what will be the name you type out for your For Loop to work while you are coding. Every variable or item that is not part of your boilerplate will be notated with a ${} and contain a number and description.

"For Loop": {
     "prefix": "for", 
     "body":[
         "for (var ${1:index} = 0; ${1:index} < ${2:array}.length;  ${1:index} += 1 )",
"\t var  ${3:element}=  ${2:array}[${1:index}];","",

}

This week we departed our safe space in the front-end and rolled up our sleeves to dig in to the server-side with Node and Express. I’d heard horror stories- that it was this big, vast space where the rules are different, what you think you know suddenly is wrong and all your nightmares become reality. Okay, not really, but I had always felt the sense of — approach with extreme caution when thinking about it.

I was, as it now seems to be quite often, way off. I actually ended up really liking this weeks challenges. Lesson learned to not let the unknown keep you from moving forward!

This week was extra exciting because on Wednesday we had our first Codesmith Hack-athon. It had been rescheduled due to the Thanksgiving holiday. Our objective: make a Google Chrome extension. I paired with fellow cohort-mate Vinnie to make an extension that highlights news stories from a Pew Research Center-sourced list of ‘politically- biased’ media sources on Google news. So far, our units have been very focused on doing various projects to learn specific material and get a good understanding of everything Javascript/ CS, and so it was really cool actually being able to ideate and create something from scratch. It definitely won’t be our last time, next week we start solo projects!

We also had a really great speaker come in- Luc Hall, Senior Engineer from Avata, who shared some really nice insights into his work, some things to keep in mind when pursuing a career in a big company or a startup, and some great tips for programming in React and keeping your code organized. Looking forward to next week when we get into databases and testing!!

It’s the first week back from the thanksgiving holiday and cohort -11 hit the ground running. It was extra challenging because not only did we cannon-ball into the seas that are React and Angular, but our bootcamp training-wheels officially came off this week with the ‘juniors’ now getting into the swing of peer code reviews and leading tech talks.

The structure of each unit is compartmentalized into chunks that allow you to get really focused on your project, and then go to the lectures where you examine the concepts to further grasp and reinforce what you’re learning, and build on that learning to understand new concepts. It is intense. There’s so much to learn! So much to process! I am definitely spending this weekend (and probably every weekend) doing some catching-up/ wrapping up things I wasn’t able to finish during the week.

Here were my takeaways for the week:

• I find that I’m really enjoying pair-programming much more now that I’m really getting the hang of it. For me, coherently communicating my thought process while coding turned out to be more difficult than I had thought it would be but during this time, I’ve really grown to appreciate and look forward to pair-programming.
• I totally get why people get so excited about frameworks! They really allow you think about your code in a different way, and when done correctly, can really help to organize your code.

That’s all for now. Can’t wait for next week!!

Okay, week 2 — it was so short! It’s thanksgiving week and among many other things, I am so thankful that we got this mini-break. I feel like this was such a great chance to let the first week at Codesmith really sink in and also gave me extra time to review some assignments I wish I’d had more time on, as well as getting some time to see and hang out with my family.

So on Monday it was back to work after the weekend. We got our new groups and I partnered up with Max for unit 3. After lots of starts and stops we were able to recreate our own Mario Kart themed snake-game.

There was a time on the 2nd day of the unit where nearly everyone was having the same problem with their projects. But by the time we presented them on Wednesday, everyone came out with some really great and really hilarious projects.

Tuesday evening we had our first guest speaker from Codesmith’s Women In Tech Speaker Series. The guest speaker, Unnati Sethi, is a Software Development Manager at IMDb and was so inspirational and funny. She had such a great story and I loved hearing her insights into the tech industry, as well as her awesome advice for forging your own career path and the importance of diversity in the workplace. I found myself all the more inspired that she was able to work in a space that combines two of her passions- tech and film (two of my passions as well). I left that talk having a serious girl-crush / idol.

Here are some of my take-aways for this week:

• I find that I’m really a fan of the feedback sessions we hold nearly every other day. They allow the students to reflect on the units, give constructive criticism to the staff and each other and learn about what we too can do to improve for our future pair partners.
• I can’t wait to see the next speaker at the Women In Tech Speaker Series. These are also open to the public, so if you’re in the LA area, I highly recommend coming to check it out!

Lastly, here’s the epic ping-pong battle that ended the Codesmith relay race. It included everyone in the two cohorts and the staff! Photo credit: Chris Fleming

Happy long weekend! Can’t wait for next week!

I was surprised that one of the most rewarding things I experienced this week was getting to know all of my fellow students. Codesmith’s approach to learning is so amazing because when you’re here, its not a competition. They’ve set up this culture where everyone is proud of everyone else’s accomplishments. When a group finishes a problem, I’ll often see them walking around helping others to not only solidify their knowledge but also support everyone else. The rule, of course, is to never give the answer but to ask the right questions.

Having said all that- this course is intense. I feel like there’s so much to absorb I’m constantly catching up. The moment I feel like I finally understand something, a new problem comes along and I am thrown. I was really nervous about this at first, (and honestly I’m still pretty nervous about it) but the seniors (who are so super nice and helpful) were quick to let me know that they often felt the same way. After hearing some of their really impressive project ideas I can’t believe that they were struggling with the same problems only six weeks ago.

I’m also really pleased with the events they hold for the students. On Tuesday, my cohort had a welcome bon-fire at the beach which was really fun! Thursday had a really awesome mentor talk- I only understood part of of it, but afterwards he answered a lot of questions about his career which was a nice insight and informative. On Friday I attended the ‘ladies lunch’. It was really nice to get to know the other ladies at Codesmith. All I can say is that it has been a really, really hard week and I loved almost every minute. I already feel like I’ve learned so much .