If you are a newbie, I recommend you make actual projects. It doesn’t even matter if they are just clones of something that already exists.
With that in mind, I made a tiny React web app that I originally called Draft. It’s purpose is to be a kind of text editor with a robust undo/redo feature inspired by Git commits, but it’s a lot simpler to use than Git.
Since then, I decided to put together a team and enlarge that project. And we renamed it ScripDraft. I’m not looking to make any money from this, but I think it will be a very cool thing to have on our portfolios, and good for experience you can show potential employers. Plus experience working with a team, which is a big deal.
As of this writing I have two members on the team with me: Kaan (@kaangokdemir on Twitter), who is our frontend lead, and Vlad ( @vladsetchin ) who is our backend lead. As for me, I’m an expert at frontend, but I’m taking a back seat in development on this one to get some experience leading a team. I’m basically team lead and product owner.
The frontend is Vue. That was Kaan’s choice and he’s frontend lead. The backend will be some kind of .Net I think. Vlad is just building whatever he wants right now, and so is Kaan. They are both very much still in development. But we are using good source control practices with Git. Also we have a Trello board we use much like Jira, and we have a slack channel.
If you want to be involved, please contact me (@adamfgcross on Twitter) or one of the others. We could definitely use some talent to focus on QA, and also a UI/UX person. Ultimately the goal is to have automated tests and a continuous deployment process.
Additional help in frontend or backend is also welcome.
Beginners are welcome, and this IS only a side project. I for one have a full time job. I don’t know much about my teammates’ lives. Once we have something that actually works and looks decent, we will host and deploy it for real. I already own the scripdraft.com domain. (There’s nothing there yet. It’s just parked.)
You will be credited for your role in development publicly.
The GitHub repos are here: https://github.com/scripdraft . There is a preview of the how the project works in a staging environment at http://stage.scripdraft.com. However, there is still much work to be done to make the app prettier and more robust.
Also: if you are not interested in working on my project, then I recommend starting your own little personal project and getting some teammates on board. It helps if at least one of you knows how good source control works. Good luck guys and gals. Again, contact me on Twitter at @adamfgcross if interested.
adamcross.blog 