When this module first started, one of my initial stumbling blocks was the environment setup. When learning something new in terms of software, this is usually my least favorite part. That’s right! Think back to learning your first programming language again- using a for loop to repeat lines of code? Fun! Writing a function or method to write a program within a program to do your dirty work? Fun! But downloading an IDE and JDK and libraries and plugins and making sure they work? Not fun! Downloading, installing, settings and preferences, linking to github to intelliJ, various command line commands to make sure Meteor is working, etc. The kinds of things that make you wonder if there weren’t these step-by-step instructions that laid it out for you verbatim, if you’d be able to get it working on your own at all! At first it seemed like quite a lot of new concepts, but through repetition, it all started to fall into place eventually. Like with coding, one of the best ways to teach yourself is to copy something else, then go back and break it apart to fully understand how the pieces equal the sum of its parts.
The Meteor module was a culmination of everything we have learned so far (which is why they’re called modules, I suppose) like HTML/CSS, Javascript, etc. And these really were the building blocks to understanding how Meteor worked by itself. It had a rather steep learning curve, but after tracing the practice WODs through, piecing the various pieces together became easier. One of the challenges was the various amounts of syntax used overall. We had HTML which is straightforward, we had Javascript that we spent a couple weeks learning, we had CSS, Semantics UI, we even had Handlebars.
But overall, Meteor felt quite powerful and it was surprising how quickly I was able to create a nice looking website following a few short instructions. Login and Database/Collections management was also easier than I anticipated it to be. Even though it was achieved with the help of the screencasts or directed by others, it was still satisfying to watch your work update in real time onto an ever-growing webpage.