Over the next few weeks I'll be spending a lot of time in Ruby on Rails and React. I look at the opportunity as one that will expand my horizon a bit and give some new perspective. While I'd prefer to stick with PHP, I'm always up to having my comfort zone expanded.

I'll be working on an app with lot of technical debt and new functionality to integrate. Ruby is foreign to me but Rails feels very familiar to Laravel so I know I'll be ok. The Rails app controls the API. So it "should" be pretty straightforward.

React will also be an interesting component of this as well. There's a lot of hype around JS frameworks like Vue and React but I'm a little more partial to server side frameworks and then sprinkling in UI frameworks as needed. This is a complete SPA that will require a bit of deep learning.

When I was in college and was forced to learn programming (I was told it was a design program with a little coding—it was mostly programming 🤦🏽‍♂️) I constantly felt overwhelmed. I hated feeling like I was always at the foot of a giant mountain of knowledge.

Obviously, I've evolved myself and enjoy (maybe even relish in) the opportunity to learn something new. Over the years I've gained experience and have unlocked some concepts that previously frustrated me. With that foundation, I have the tools to solve any problem.

I'll share more about the specific project as soon as possible.