Weeknotes March 10 2025

Work

  • Quiet start to the week as it was a public holiday in Melbourne on Monday, meaning that my current client was offline
  • Mostly toddling around dealing with dependency upgrades and some small issues that have been put on the backburner as the plan for the next few months of work gets finalised

Learning

Currently still working through Josh W. Comeau's Joy of React course, focusing on the Hooks module this week. Some interesting snippets I've picked up so far:

  • useRef can actually hold more than just DOM nodes - I've just never seen this done before.
  • Calling useRef with an empty dependency array is the canonical way to run something once after the component mounts, and never again - this has always felt a bit hacky to me but Josh is saying this is the correct way to do it.
  • Learning some general bits and pieces about cleaning up useEffects when we add in global event listeners and so on. I'm grateful I come from a functional programming background, so returning a function inside a function is pretty natural to me at this stage.
  • Touching on data fetching in React, including exposure to SWR. Promises are one of those things that I can never remember the correct syntax for off the top of my head.

Personal

  • Started painting my nails again and it makes me happy c: A little sad that the "bubblegum pink" I ordered is closer to a flesh colour, but it's still nice. Shoutout to GlossyBoys which are an Aussie-owned and gender-inclusive brand of gel polish!
  • Working on a portfolio site revamp - making friends with Figma again to get some rough mockups going in order to visualise the color combos, fonts, and layout I want, but things will probably shift as I actually implement the redesign
  • The scarf I'm knitting is coming along nicely! I think it'll probably be done at the end of next week at the current pace I'm going with it
  • Currently tackling Don't Stop Believin' by Journey at singing lessons. Really happy that I've almost gotten it down after a single lesson!