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Derek Wood

Derek Wood

@sheriffderek

Art college > Music > Web dev > Design > Education @sheriffderek , Director @ Perpetual Education Only shipping posts (maybe not-shipping on Sundays)
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Joined June 2024

I just use it for posting my "work in progress" - and new features I'm adding to my projects.

I have a laptop and an iPad. I can’t relate to the MacBook being any more work to carry than the iPad. You’ll get so much more done with the laptop… and it all counts! Are you sure?

just follow some design systems

Tell me more. I can't imagine learning how to design web applications just by looking at a UI library. that's like the tiiipppy tip of the iceberg.

Those are pretty funny commercials. I can see how you'd learn a lot about the layout and things via webflow. But in this case, the person is trying to learn how to write the code by hand.

“Commercials”, lol :D

Well, yeah, Webflow’s team is really cooking with the video content.

In your case, I think, Webflow can be a good option too if a person wants to get results like really fast — but, yeah, for those who want to start coding right off the bat it’s necessary, well, to do so.

ChatGPT is great for me - because I have 13 years of experience. But I find that new devs don't know what to ask. If you're using it like an encyclopedia and asking it to tell you about how things work, it can be great - but people also just grab code from it - and will ultimately not really learn what they are doing and why.

Kids don't know anything haha. They memorize how to use the UI of their apps but mostly don't have any conscious connection to how anything works. There's no model. People don't know what they don't know. So - I think that working with an expert guide is pretty smart. I learned all this stuff on my own - with no network or anything and while it worked out... it wasn't smart.

When you're done with the Udemy course, it could be fun to have a chat about it. If you ever want a code review or something - let me know. : )

I don't think I would have agreed with starting out in Figma a few years ago, but I'm using it more and more to explain things now that it has autolayout and variables. I kinda show a little Figma, show a little HTML, a little Figma, a little HTML and it works great.

a friend who already knows how to do it who will help you at each step

This would certainly be my ideal! (for pretty much everything) and it's surprising how rare it is that someone suggests it.

Based on this, I'm surprised your suggestion isn't to start out by diagraming out the product. I feel like if you had one day, that might have more value than the time spent in a gamified sandbox.

Sounds like it's going pretty well for you. What do you plan to build afterward?

I have several apps in mind - I'm writing a guide on UK tender responses, and will build a larger app around that subject once the guide is done, with a bunch of smaller apps to directly support the guide (freebies to drive interest, essentially). We'll see how it goes; I'm not expecting magic, but it's a good exercise to learn code with a specific goal in mind.

When you're done with the Udemy course, it could be fun to have a chat about it. If you ever want a code review or something - let me know. : )