Struggling, Learning, and Building: My Developer Journey So Far

For a while, I found myself feeling stuck. Despite putting in hours of study and project work, I often felt like I could only remember 50% of what I learned. It was frustrating—knowing that I had gone through tutorials, watched videos, and read docs, yet when it came to applying the concepts, I’d freeze or forget.

But here’s what I realized: this feeling is normal, and the only way forward is to keep building, keep coding, and keep exploring.

Refocusing on the Fundamentals

I decided to slow down and go back to the core concepts, especially in frontend development and React. Rather than rushing through material, I began to spend more time understanding how things work under the hood—particularly React Hooks, which are so essential yet easy to misuse if not fully understood.

Sharpening My Frontend Skills

To strengthen my frontend skills, I built two projects:

• 🔹 Result Summary Page Project – A small but clean UI-focused component to practice layout, responsiveness, and component structure.
• 🔹 News Website Landing Page – A full landing page design to test my skills in HTML, CSS, and responsiveness, while keeping accessibility and design in mind.

These small wins gave me confidence and reminded me how practice always beats passive learning.

Leveling Up: The Zcrum Project (Jira Clone)

To push myself further and combine everything I’ve been learning, I started working on a Jira Clone project, which I’ve named Zcrum.

This is not just a to-do app or another CRUD project. It’s a full-scale clone that involves:

• 🔧 Complex frontend UI logic and state handling in React
• ⚛️ Deep use of React hooks and components
• 🔁 Next.js for server-side rendering and better performance
• 🧠 Learning about PostgreSQL, Neon DB, and Prisma ORM for database handling

I’ve already completed the landing page, and I’m beyond excited for the upcoming parts of this project. It’s going to be extensive, a bit overwhelming—but most importantly, full of growth.

Final Thoughts

I still sometimes feel unsure or forget things. But now I’ve learned that’s just part of the journey. What matters is that I don’t stop. I keep learning, keep building, and keep challenging myself.

Zcrum isn’t just a clone—it’s a personal milestone, a symbol of pushing past doubt and showing up anyway.

Let’s build something great. 🚀