I don't mind that ChatGPT gets things wrong sometimes. Hear me out:

AI chat bots are not fact spewers. This is derived from the first adjective: AI. "Artificial Intelligence" can be simply put as "faking intelligence".

Intelligence is a collection of knowledge and skills. Knowledge does not necessarily equate to facts. I am an intelligent person, but not everything I tell you is going to be free of bias, opinion, and personal experience.

Therefore, it's important to keep in mind that ChatGPT, as a "faking intelligence chat bot", will also answer you with bias and the opinions and experiences it is taught. With that comes the opportunity for being wrong.

If we then adjust our mentality towards ChatGPT with this understanding, maybe we won't be so offended by its existence.

The first ~12 years of my career were mostly WordPress-centered. It worked for me. WordPress allowed me to boost my service offerings by a LOT, and in that golden era, I came in super high demand, super quickly, which rocket launched my career as well as access to learning and gaining experience. (Aside: I remember being amazed by, "17% of the web runs on WordPress". That percentage today is now up to 43.5%. Undeniably astounding.)

Then I changed to React to get into the higher pay, higher reward world of frontend software development. I've had no hesitation locking into that platform as it has brought on a new era of enjoyment and success.

As I get deeper and deeper into frontend tech, I find myself "locking in" on certain tools that I enjoy. It sounds scary, but the risks really aren't that high; It's just technology. I do, however, tend to favor open source and MIT licensed tools and "owning your data". (Thank you WordPress community and dogma.)

Tools, platforms, vendors... they all come and go. The attitude and mantra that I relate to most is "strong opinions, loosely held."

• Know your stuff

• Know what you want, what you like, and what works

• Don't be afraid to let go and change

• Know that change may be necessary, and sometimes dramatically urgent

Oh and btw:

• Websites running on React: ~5%

• Websites running on Next.js: 0.509%

• Websites running on Strapi: less than 0.1%

I've been a little fuzzy on what my mid to long term career goals should be, but this current job search has the topic consistently front-of-mind. I had an "Ah ha!" moment during an interview today and upon further reflection, I think I've finally nailed down what my true goal is.

Lead

I've tossed around the idea of management because I know I want to press beyond a basic individual contributor role, but my people management skills just aren't that great. Not because I'm bad with people, but because—in my opinion—I'm good with people.

I'm not good at being critical of others, but I am good at thinking critically. This doesn't really apply to people management per se, but it does lend nicely to project and product leadership.

So what's the difference between management and leadership?

For me, management is about execution and leadership is about innovation. I excel in research and discovery and don't mind taking calculated risks for the sake of advancement. I like to see projects and products prepare for the future and scale into success.

Let me clear: I'm not necessarily interested in people leadership. I can inspire and "rally the troops" as needed, but my focus ideally would be on projects and products with a particular specialization on UX and tech.

This is all still new and fresh for me so I have more to buff out, but it feels good to have a direction to point myself in!

I'm pro-alphabetize in code.

For most things, such as keys, props, and imports (within groups). But when it comes to CSS properties, I am completely anti-alphabetize.

For one thing, CSS cascades (duh), so when you alphabetize, you run the risk of incorrectly overriding styles within the same property list.

Secondly, I prefer to group my properties. I'm not super strict on this, but here are the rough groups I use:

• display (flex, flex-direction, gap, etc.)

• position (absolute, inset, z-index, etc.)

• size (width, height, etc.)

• appearance (color, background, padding, etc.)

I also put an extra line break between the first three groups and the appearance group. This helps me quickly reference the styles I'm specifically looking for when scanning back over CSS.

Building this TypeScript/React/Remix/Strapi project is going to be one of the most shining highlights of my career. I've been having such an awesome time working on the #HeirOfDragons design, but I'm getting a little antsy and wanting to dive into the code.

1. I have high hopes for the quality, stability, and scalability of the design system I'm going to develop: DragonScale

2. I've been wanting to get some real experience in Remix

3. I'm all in on React/TypeScript as I am highly advanced in both

4. Strapi is going to launch me light years ahead in terms of managing content and offering a dependable API for running a small community

5. Most importantly: I expect great success for Chloe's project. She has been working so diligently on it for so long and her passion for bringing the story to life is pure and admirable

Alas, I will continue my due diligence and focus on finishing up the designs. I'm getting very close and layouts are starting to snap together quickly as the foundation I've laid is super tight yet malleable.

Prepare to be amazed!

For as long as I can remember, I've used Title Case for button text. It seemed correct, and it was a style mandate at one company I was at.

In my most recent role, the standard was Sentence case. It took me a long time to get used to this, but eventually it came naturally to me.

Now it just makes sense. A button should be a verb at the minimum and anything after that should be treated like any other sentence, sans punctuation.

When I started on the #HeirOfDragons design, I tried out Title Case for button text, but just couldn't get over the fact that the text in a button isn't describing something like a title does, it's telling you to do something, like a sentence does. Thus, I've decided to stick to Sentence case.

I was just thinking about how glad I am that I switched my focus from building websites to building web apps. I took it upon myself to learn React and it was a life altering decision for the better.

One of the biggest moves I'm grateful for was the chance that Thomas Breese took on bringing me on to his team at TrueCar, Inc. He was my engineering manager there and even during my technical interview, he patiently introduced me to Redux so I could complete the exercise. His instruction was just what I needed and he found me worthy of hiring.

I learned and grew so much during my time working with him. He also taught me to create custom hooks and how to use context in React.

My skill intensified so much during my time at TrueCar, and I'll be forever grateful. I can't wait for the next chapter that is coming in my walk with software engineering.