Years ago, I went to a pickup game at the Y. Which reminded me why I quit the basketball team in High School for a nerdier Computer Lab career. I couldn't shoot, dribble or run (although I'm not sure I could ever shoot). I got picked last.

This reminded me why I left the team. I found something I was good at. I loved programming and helping others. Ultimately, that would lead to success, but it wasn't a smooth ride. However, it happened because of the one good lesson I remember from the basketball team...hustle.

The Newsletter

Last week, I wrote the first newsletter, hit the submit button and moved on to write a note to a co-worker. After I wrote a paragraph, I thought...let's check the traffic. I was shocked! 550 subscribers. I reported this to my friend, hit refresh, 650 and going. By the time she replied it was 1000 and as I'm writing this, close to hitting 6,000 subscribers in about a week. That was both exciting and terrifying.

So, thanks for joining my #nerdherd.

The Learning Habit

One thing that really worked for me, even before I was teaching is to commit to learning something new every week, even if it's something small.

I did this video this week about a newer CSS feature called clamp(). It lets you add a min and a max when you specify a size for elements. It's a simple, yet powerful feature that can really improve how you write code. The perfect thing to learn this week.

In addition to posting them on LinkedIn, I'm adding these to my YouTube channel. LinkedIn is a great place to post, but it's really hard to find older content, so the channel is a good place to find out the personal things I'm posting and it always help if you subscribe there as well.

It's a React world and we're just living in it

I've been doing a lot of React lately. Specifically two courses on React using hooks and also GraphQL. Coming to the library soon. One of the most amazing projects I've seen is this React Component library called react-icons.

It lets you import icons from a ton of libraries including my new go to Bootstrap Icons, but also Font Awesome, and lots more. The cool thing is how easy and efficient it is. After doing the classic installation.

npm install react-icons --save

You can just use it in your components by calling the library you want to load from and one or more icons you want to load into your component.

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That's just so simple and because it's only loading what it needs, real efficient. I wish something like this existed for regular javascript or any other framework.

The closest thing that has really smart installation options is css.gg, although it's not as deep as other libraries at 700 icons. You can use a link tag to install the whole library, or just the icon you need.

<link href="https://css.gg/ {ICONNAME} .css" rel="stylesheet" />

Honestly, I hope more libraries take this approach. I did a video on this on one of my earlier versions of Apply.

It's just the type of thing that makes life easier and your sites load faster.

Back to the Hustle

Again thanks for subscribing and let me know what you'd like me to talk about. Make sure you follow my profile. As I mentioned last week, I try to find two useful things everyday that will help you Apply yourself to full stack development.

If you don't believe me, then here's what Angie Rodiguez had to say.

Also, leave me a comment. That's how I know you're part of the #nerdherd (thanks to Daniel Bisset for the tag).

Now, get back to the hustle my friends.