Elancerz

My Role

I was the lead front-end developer for this project my responsible includes setting up the structure for the projectm choosing the right tech stack for the project and building the project from the ground up until it's fully finished. I was also responsible for onboarding new devs for assisting them to get to to the right track.

Web Stack and Explanation

Using React combined with Next.js framework makes the most sense to me when developing the project as a crucial point for the project was SEO which Next.js makes it a good choise as it offers Server Side rendering for the rendering the content, since the project mostly deals with Server state I decided to use react-query which I had found to be a great choice in the end.

Problems and Thought Process

As this was the first big project that I had lead one of the problems that I had encounter was choosing the right tool for the project, as for such a big project like this I needed to to think of ways that could help the project scale in the future. While the lack of experience had hindered me able to decide quickly this was still a great way for me to gain experience and also learn from it.

Lessons Learned

I had learned a lot while building out Elancerz as it had gave me an opportunity to gain some real work experience and also work alongside with talended people. As this was the first big project that I had worked on there so many mistakes as well as lessons that I had learned along the way.

Use TypeScript

from the start I was planning to use TypeScript for the project, however I was a bit hesistant as due to my lack of experience with using TypeScript which in the ended decided to go with JavaScript but I had really wish that we had decided to go with TypeScript as this could had prevented us with the bugs that sometimes occur which could help us to focus more on launching new features rather than focusing on fixing bugs.

Project Tech Stack

During the planning planning, we were deciding on whether we should go with Create React App or go with using Next.js, as we were hesitant at first to go with using Next.js as due to the lack of experience or issues that may popup that's related to Next.js that we may not be able to solve, however while using Next.js I had found to be no issues nor major problems with using Next.js when in fact had shown a great developer experience when building out the front-end. A lesson that i had learned was when it comes to choosing a tool, choose the tool that will help you solves a problem. The

Growth

One of the things that I had learned was one of the best way to increase career growth was to dive into unknown projects as this helps you push outside of your own comfort zone as well as learn new things along the way. As from the start I didn't know what I had got myself into, I didn't have work experience but I know that I'll figure it out along the way, Don't be afraid to dive into the unknown.