Coming Soon - Side Project Starter Kits

For close to the last year I’ve been brainstorming about courses I could produce. I have one that I’m excited about, where we build a Rust Web Server from scratch, but it’s going to take me a sec to develop. In the meantime, I’ve been doing my research to understand better what junior developers are itching for in their learning. And I think I stumbled upon something that you all will love; Side Project Starter Kits!

Everyone is always saying that the best way to learn coding is by working on projects. After doing a tutorial or two learners can hit a brick wall, and not know how to proceed. When they ask others for help they are immediately told that they need to work on projects, and not follow tutorials.

But getting started on your own project can be daunting! When working on a side project, you are not only the coder but the project manager and designer! It’s like learning 3 jobs all in one. And while doing the process of breaking down an idea into actionable steps, and designing the UI can be super valuable skills, but sometimes you want to focus on the code and technology.

And from this “Side Project Starter Kits” were born! I’m working to develop a few side project ideas, that come with high-fidelity fleshed out designs AND task lists. Why should you have to become a PM and designer to practice your coding skills? And with my starter kits you won’t need to!

I have a few ideas for projects that I’m working on, and the first is a Library Manager. I want to make these more exciting than the basic todo list and I think a Library Manager is a fun place to start! I’ll provide a project plan and timeline that you can follow to build your own web app to help a library manage its inventory. It will allow Librarians to take stock of their current inventory, and allow Members to check in and out different books and other goodies. Along with the project plan, I’m working with my wife, our in house designer, to create beautiful Figma mockups, for everyone to use as reference. Don’t like all my features, or want to change up the designs? Please do! These starter kits are meant to be just that. A place for you to start, but if you want to take the project in a different direction, please do and I’d love to hear what you end up building!

If this sounds interesting to you, watch this newsletter and I hope to have more details about this first start kit as we approach 2025. And if you know someone who might be interested have them sign-up for updates at coreyja.com/newsletter