That "2 week" coding project I told my manager about actually took 8 months

I've been seeing so many people online saying you can learn React in a weekend and build an app in 2 weeks. Well I tried that with a simple inventory tracker for my buddy's small shop in Austin. First week I was just figuring out why my components wouldn't render. Then another month figuring out how to connect to a database. Then 3 months of random bugs. It's been 8 months and the thing barely works. Has anyone else had a project take way longer than all those YouTube bros claim?

2 comments

2 Comments

hugo23818d ago

Next time start with a single SQLite table and work up from there.

juliahall18d ago

Honestly I gotta push back on this because that "learn React in a weekend" stuff is more about getting started than becoming an expert. Nobody says you can build a production app that fast. The whole point of those bootcamp videos is to show you the basics, not to make you a senior dev in 48 hours. If you spent 3 months on random bugs, maybe the issue is you didn't spend enough time understanding how things actually work before diving in. Real projects always take longer than you think, but that doesn't mean the timeline wasnt doable for someone with more experience. Ive seen people stand up simple inventory trackers in a couple weeks because they already knew the stack. Your 8 months sounds like you were learning as you went, which is fine but not what those tutorials were promising.