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Learning new skills during my downtime

How I found a useful way to spend my downtime

Over the last few weeks, the world has changed dramatically, and the way we work has changed with it. While our clients are figuring out how the crisis affects them, we lost some projects, and others were postponed. My schedule became quite empty. On the upside, since my daily commute changed from 3 hours to 3 minutes, I have become quite good at making some world class breakfast. I can’t be having breakfast 8 hours a day though — I had to find a useful way to spend my downtime. Here’s what I did.

Getting the most from my downtime

The past few weeks have been an excellent time for learning new skills. For example, I followed an online Node.js course to improve my tooling skills. The most fun thing I did though, was building an SPA from scratch: I still haven’t found a note app that does exactly what I want, so what will any good developer do? I decided to build one myself.

On my way to a note app that does exactly what I want. Built using Vue, Apollo and Prisma.
On my way to a note app that does exactly what I want. Built using Vue, Apollo and Prisma.

At De Voorhoede I already have some experience working with Vue, but I’ve never set up a project from scratch. I am also responsible for every aspect of the application. This means that during the development of my app, I also encountered all the gotchas when building in a reactive framework. I learned a lot from this project!

Getting the most from your downtime

Do you also want to get better? There are lots of things to do online to improve your front-end skills. Challenge yourself with Wes Bos’s JavaScript 30 Challenge or Matthias Martin’s 100 Days CSS Challenge. Maybe you can follow an online conference, like Jamstack Conf 2020 or ReactEurope. Or do some online, discounted courses, for example The Complete Node.js Developer Course, which I followed to improve my tooling skills.

Do you also want to become better at Vue? Or are you new to Vue? We took our Vue Masterclass online, so that you can learn new skills from the comfort of your home.

The next Vue Masterclass takes place on 14 and 15 May and still has some spots left! On the first day we will teach you the core concepts of Vue. On day 2 we will dive deeper into more advanced functionality of Vue. Get your tickets via Eventbrite.

Declan teaching at a workshop
In a 2 day hands-on workshop, we’ll teach you everything you need to know to build large performant web apps with Vue. Tickets are available via Eventbrite.
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