Giving React components a “State” is the most popular way to store program data in parent components that child components might need for themselves or to share with other children so they can do their jobs. Up until recently the only way to give a component a state was to…

“When the sky is a bright canary yellow I forget ev’ry cloud I’ve ever seen, So they called me a cockeyed optimist Immature and incurably green.” ‘A Cockeyed Optimist’ from South Pacific, 1958 Since we are currently studying JavaScript, and UI rendering in particular, we are encountering something of a…

Deliverables in coding bootcamp have an annoying habit of coming at you in waves. Big, tall, hairy waves. By the end of this week (in addition to writing this blog post, and making a presentation on it) I have to finish 25 labs, retake a code challenge that I did…

We are at the end of 3 weeks of bootcamp, and just finished our final projects of the first phase the school calls “Mod 1”. The project is supposed to demonstrate mastery of the concepts taught, and as such has to contain certain elements, like use of proper OO concepts…

The last time I wrote code was as an undergrad back in the early 90s. Yes, they actually had computers back then, and they didn’t have to be programmed with punch cards. (And if you got that “punch card” reference, then you are old even to an old fossil like…

I’ve worked in high-tech my whole life: as a semiconductor engineer, a network engineer, an applications engineer, a small-business technology consultant, a marketing manager….but never as a software engineer, a “coder”. Well, that changes starting today: my first day of boot camp as a student at Flatiron School. You might…