Interactive comment section with React, TypeScript and TailwindCSS

What are you most proud of, and what would you do differently next time?

I'm quite happy with the structure and readability of my project, and the responsiveness of the website. Usually the end result of the latter is something I'm never really satisfied with despite how many tweaks I make, but this time it looks smoother than in my past projects. I'm also proud of having thought of a few additional requirements which in my opinion made sense in this challenge.

In each challenge I strive to learn/practice a new technology, tool or skill. In the previous challenges, it was simply about using React. Then I added TypeScript. Then I added Tailwind and Vite. In this one, I added unit tests using Vitest and the React Testing Library. While I want to keep pushing myself and learning tools I haven't used before, I realised it became a lot to handle in this challenge. I mean, the challenge was already A LOT in itself for me, so when I had to deal with TypeScript errors in my unit tests for example, I wondered if I wasn't just getting sidetracked for too long (especially considering how little time I had to dedicate to coding the past year). Had the challenge been easier, I wouldn't have minded as much I think. But I think next time I won't necessarily try to layer up all the new things I learned. So I might remove TS from the equation to make things a little painless, especially now that I already feel way more comfortable with TS. (I know how paradoxal this might sound. 😅)

Also, next time I want to try and think more about how to implement or troubleshoot something before querying ChatGPT. It was the first time I used it in a project and it's a fantastic tool that got me unstuck many times, and maybe I felt not up to the task at times and I let the discouragement and the lack of (coding) time get the best of me. It's undeniable that I relied on it a lot in this project, but I don't want to turn this into a habit.

What challenges did you encounter, and how did you overcome them?

The challenge of making time for working on the project, for one. I started it a year ago and I had a much slower pace than usual (and my usual is already slower than average). The main reason to this was probably motivational. I also work two days a week in the frontend team of my company and as it can get quite intense there too, I probably felt entitled to a little respite from coding on my free time. Then being stuck on TypeScript errors (for example, but let's be honest it's almost always TS) that prevented me from moving on and tackle more interesting core features of the app - that was also difficult and annoying to overcome.

I wrote a lot in detail about other challenges I encountered in the README of my project, so more can be found there.

What specific areas of your project would you like help with?

Mmmmmh... If I were to further develop this project into a full-stack app, how might one proceed? Where to start? What tools would you use? This might be something I'd like to explore in the future and use this project as basis for.

Aside from that, if you have any thoughts on my solution, I would love to hear them.