Forem: Archie Auburn

Day 109 of my Web Dev Diary - First React Project

Archie Auburn — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 19:33:55 +0000

Spent 6+ hours working on my mini Resume Builder project in React. Took sooooo much mental gymnastics, but I'm super happy with how I ended up structuring all the components, the end result looks super clean and is as scalable as it gets. Considering it is my first experience making any kind of project using React, I think it's going pretty good (I even added some extra features along the way, like applying dufferent styles to the resulting document.

Tomorrow I'm planning on adding export to PDF, and wrapping up the project after some polish, since it's already been a huge learning opportunity, and I can't wait to extend my knowledge further.

See you tomorrow! 👋

My web dev diary - day 108

Archie Auburn — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 18:23:17 +0000

The main goal for the day was to finish the module on core React State concepts (like single source of truth principle, scoping state, and other stuff), and to start building my first mini React project!

The project is a simple CV builder tool that lets you edit everything, pick a style, and then export it to PDF. I bullied my fear of blank page to death many projects ago, so after some sketching and planning I started right away with building the directory hierarchy and the core components

The file structure I came up with so far

It's a completely new paradigm compared to building stuff in vanilla JS, so obviously I'm still getting used to utilizing all those concepts to my advantage. Nevertheless, will keep updating and learning in public.

Here's the directory so far, though it's nothing more than some components glued and taped together for now - https://github.com/soloiaros/cv-builder-react

If you have any advice, I would absolutely love to hear it! I'm only starting with React, so any piece of guidance from someone more skilled is just invaluable.

My first daily update here - moving on with day 107

Archie Auburn — Sun, 19 Apr 2026 20:45:46 +0000

I have a long-running series of daily web dev diary on LinkedIn, but I decided to move it to a more developer-related community, so here is how my day of learning went!

I'm continuing to dive deeper into React, and today I studied State and the best practices when working with it, as well as some stuff to avoid. Mainly explored the state structures and the entire 'State as a Snapshot' concept and where it really stems from. Definitely can tell that I understand much more about the way React handles rendering.

The majority of my practice came from the React Docs themselves - I'm simply in love with the way they're written, and the challenges provided in the end of each section are just golden.

Will keep updating daily! I've found that this series helps a ton with showing up every day, and that alongside it I've come a really big way from where I was at the time I started it.