Okay, so, “Chris Paul Addicted to Finals,” right? Sounds kinda clickbaity, but honestly, it’s about my own obsession with perfecting a certain final project. Not basketball, unfortunately. Wish I was good at that.
The Beginning: A Simple Idea
It all started with this little side project I wanted to build – a basic to-do list app. Super original, I know. But I wanted to use it as an excuse to learn a new JavaScript framework. I’d been hearing a lot about *, so I thought, “Why not?”
Diving In (Headfirst)
I started by just following a bunch of online tutorials. You know, the usual. “Build your first Vue app in 30 minutes!” Yeah, right. It took me way longer. There was a lot of Googling, a lot of Stack Overflow copy-pasting (don’t judge!), and a whole lot of frustration. I kept running into weird errors that made absolutely no sense.
- First hurdle: Setting up the environment. *, npm, Vue CLI… It was a whole new world.
- Second hurdle: Understanding the component system. Props, events, data… My brain felt like it was going to explode.
- Third hurdle: Trying to make it look halfway decent. CSS is not my friend.
The Middle: The Grind
Okay, so after a week or so, I actually had something that resembled a to-do list. You could add items, delete them, and mark them as complete. Functionally, it worked. But it looked like crap. And the code… Oh, the code was a mess. Like, spaghetti code levels of bad.
I knew I couldn’t leave it like that. That’s where the “addiction” part kicked in. I started refactoring. I spent hours cleaning up the code, breaking it down into smaller components, and trying to make it more readable. I even started using ESLint to catch all my stupid errors.
Then came the styling. I tried a few different CSS frameworks, but nothing really clicked. Eventually, I decided to just learn some basic CSS and do it myself. It was slow and painful, but I actually started to enjoy it. I even learned about things like flexbox and grid! Who knew?
The (Almost) End: The Polish
After weeks of tweaking and polishing, I finally had something I was actually proud of. It wasn’t perfect, of course. There were still some rough edges. But it looked good, it worked well, and the code was (relatively) clean.
Lessons Learned (The Hard Way)
So, what did I learn from all this?
- * is actually pretty cool. It’s a lot easier to learn than I thought.
- Refactoring is essential. Don’t be afraid to throw away code and start over.
- CSS isn’t the devil. It just takes practice.
- And most importantly, sometimes you just have to get obsessed with something to actually learn it.
I still use that to-do list app every day. It’s nothing fancy, but it’s mine. And that’s what makes it special. Maybe I’ll try building a “real” app next time. But for now, I’m happy with my little Chris Paul-esque finals obsession.
