I was raised to work hard. Which is great! I have a fabulous work ethic, especially when I’m fully bought-in to a project, and it’s served me well all the way through school and into the professional world. I think everybody should know how to work hard, and be ready and willing to do so when the time and case demands it. BUT I think it’s important to note: You are not magically a better person because you’ve worked hard.

I have a friend who talks about programming making you feel alternately like a genius and an idiot, and every developer I’ve mentioned this to since laughs and agrees. Years ago he sent me this picture to illustrate his point: We've all been here. Over and over. I think about this a lot when I’m wrestling with a problem, whether it’s a new concept, bug in my code, or whatever. It’s actually a salve to my wounds, because it reminds me that whatever issues I’m having today will probably be gone tomorrow - or even maybe in the next hour.

I’m onto my second set of video lectures on using NextJS 13+ (again, I’ll plug Frontend Masters, which I love, and Scott Moss’s well laid-out teaching style). Recently the concept of route grouping clicked in my brain, so I thougt I’d share it here. As I mentioned in my initial post on NextJS, routing is handled via directory structure (very cool, easy to understand, big fan). Additionally, your project also requires a root layout file that indicates the…well, layout of all child pages.

So NextJS is essentially opinionated React…plus? Okay, I’m listening. I’m running through a great Frontend Masters class to learn the basics of the latest version of NextJS (that’d be 13, with the introduction of the new app directory and removal of the pages directory). It’s been awesome (Scott Moss is not only a great instructor but is a really smart dude in general - check out his LinkedIn someime), but some of the latest changes in the 13+ version of NextJS have made even the latest class already be a touch out of date (example: the head file discussed in the class no longer exists in 13.

I’m blowing the dust off of an old project idea, and I’m finding the many development options avaialable pretty overwhelming. I’m so used to writing code in a preexisting codebase that having the option to choose anything I want and the options themselves feel like a lot for me to sift thorough right now. It’s like trying to pick a brand of toothpaste at the grocery store.