“The Joy of React” has a launch date!

Hello there!

You're receiving this email because you signed up for updates about my course, The Joy of React(opens in new tab). I'm happy to report my course now has a launch date: Monday, January 23rd.

As I write this in the final days of 2022, it's been almost a complete year that I've been working full-time on The Joy of React. It's been a heck of a ride, and I'm so excited to share all of this with you. 😄

The course is launching in “Early Access”, with about 2/3rds of the content available from day 1. There are over 150 lessons already, including:

• 4 complete modules
• 2 real-world-inspired projects
• 2 bonus reference modules, covering modern JavaScript fundamentals + React developer tooling.

Over the past few months, about 80 developers have been helping me test the course. It's a pretty diverse group: there are developers who have never written a line of React, and others who have been using it for years. And I'm happy to say, the feedback has been incredibly positive.

I'll be sharing more substantial updates about the course in the weeks ahead, but today I wanted to dig into something fun, a bit of whimsy from the course. Let's talk about cover art.

Every module and project in my course has custom 3D illustrations, made by me using 3D modeling software called Blender. For example, here's the cover art for the second project, where we build an accessible <Toast> component:

Coming up with visual metaphors can be really tricky. How, exactly, do you visualize abstract concepts like side effects, or application state??

I had an idea a few weeks ago: a large machine, filled with all sorts of doodads and widgets, sliders and knobs and buttons. A machine like this is a pretty good visualization of state, right?

I spent a couple hours and came up with this rough prototype:

Over the holiday break, I spent a couple hours every morning adding more modules, expanding the machine. The goal was to fill the viewport, to create a sense of an infinite machine that goes on and on forever.

Here's the final result:

(The images in this email are small and compressed, but you can click this one to see the larger, uncompressed, color-accurate version!)

I took inspiration from lots of places: MIDI controllers, airplane cockpits, modular synthesizers, nuclear power plants. It doesn't really make sense as a real machine, but I'm not bothered. 😄

And here's what it looks like in context, in the course:

I'm honestly kinda shocked by how well this turned out 😅. I'm still a beginner when it comes to Blender! I've learned maybe 5% of the fundamental skills that professional 3D artists have, but I've leveraged the heck out of them.

To give you a better sense, here's what the models themselves look like, without textures or lighting:

You can kinda tell here that it's mostly basic shapes, with some bevelling and extruding to add detail.

Here's an overhead shot, that shows the layout (and how much I cheated by not building stuff outside of the viewport 😅):

If you're curious how I went about picking up this skill, I share a bit in my blog post, “How To Learn Stuff Quickly”(opens in new tab). There are several techniques I use whenever I'm learning something new, whether it's 3D modeling or coding or anything else.

The Joy of React launches on January 23rd, probably around 11AM Eastern Time(opens in new tab). Add an event to your calendar so you don't miss the launch!

I'll be sharing more info about the course in the weeks ahead. Until then, I'll leave you with some glamor shots of my big state machine 😄

Happy holidays, for those who celebrate! I hope you're taking some time to rest 😴
—Josh