Guy at the coding meetup told me I was overcomplicating my first project

I spent 3 weeks building a to-do app with React and Redux last month, and some dude who's been coding for 10 years looked at it and said 'why not just use plain JavaScript and localStorage.' Has anyone else had their fancy project completely wrecked by a simple fix like that?

2 comments

2 Comments

maxpalmer4d ago

My buddy Dave did the same thing when I showed him my first Rails app a few years back. He just said "bro why didn't you just use PHP and a text file." It stung at first but honestly he was right. Those big frameworks and state management tools are great for huge projects but for a to-do list you're adding layers of complexity that don't need to be there. I remember spending 2 extra days just on Redux boilerplate alone when localStorage would have taken me 20 minutes. The hard part is realizing the time you already spent learning those tools isn't wasted it helps you know when to actually reach for them later.

casey_torres603d ago

That "2 extra days just on Redux boilerplate" hit me right in the feels. I once spent an entire weekend setting up GraphQL for a blog with like 5 posts.