Welcome to Component Odyssey, I’m very excited for you to be starting your odyssey!
Component Odyssey is a course that will guide you along your component library journey. In this course, I’ll teach you how to built a component library with a minimal tech stack. You won’t get locked into the shiny framework of the month, and you’ll learn to write components that work everywhere.
Component Odyssey doesn’t focus on a particular framework, like React, or Vue. Instead, you’ll focus on the technologies baked into the browser to help you build a complex component library. As a result you’ll:
Over several modules you’ll learn the ins and outs of building a component library through a highly interactive course. The lessons contain a mixture of videos, articles, code snippets, and several downloadable repos for some challenging hands-on code exercises.
By the end of this course, you’ll have not only published a suite of components and utility classes for others to use, but also developed the skills to pick and choose the tools most appropriate for you and your projects in the future.
You’ll become a more future-proof web developer
The core technologies introduced in Component Odyssey are baked into the browser, meaning that as you become more familiar with these tools, you’ll also become more familiar with building for the browser as a whole. The skills you learn in this course will serve you in almost any front-end project you work on in the future.
You’ll build components that your users will love
You won’t just be writing components in Component Odyssey, you’ll learn how to style, test, type, and publish them. These are all important in ensuring that the components you ship are robust and user-friendly.
You’ll boost your career opportunities
Building a component library is an excellent way to contribute to the open-source community, which improves your chances of working on other cool projects, or landing some wonderful job roles. Just sharing the library you’ve built from scratch with a prospective job employer will help you stand out from the crowd of applicants.
I did just this when I interviewed for my current job, and the interviewers loved my component library.
You’ll learn to do more with less
The components you’ll be building in Component Odyssey are built using web components, the browser’s built-in way to create reusable components. You don’t need a framework to write and publish them, and as a result, you’ll be able to deliver components that work across the web.
Web components aren’t new or radical, loads of large companies use web components to power their web experiences, like Microsoft, Adobe, and NASA.
You’ll also be introduced to other tools and technologies that lean into the browser’s built-in capabilities, which means that you, and your library consumers, can avoid complex build systems to run your code.
You don’t need to be an expert web developer to take this course, it’s designed for anyone with some working HTML, CSS, and JavaScript experience. If you’ve built a few interactive websites and have a few months of web development experience, then you’re golden.
Component Odyssey doesn’t cover the absolute basics of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, but it does build on top of those browser fundamentals, so you can build great components without a framework.
Is Component Odyssey worth taking if you’re a seasoned developer? Absolutely, there’ll still be so much for you to gain, as you’ll be diving deep into web components, and you’ll learn how to style, test, and publish them.
If you have a little experience with version control and package managers, that’ll come in handy too. I run through the basics for both, so don’t sweat it if you’ve never used them before.
As for me, I’m Andrico, a web developer based in London. I’ve been a professional web developer for the last 7 years and have worked across a bunch of startups. I’m currently building design-to-code automation and design system automation at Anima.
In previous roles, I was a front-end champion, where I ran workshops about front-end development, web accessibility, and front-end testing.
I’ve also built a few personal projects on the side like Cali Skills, a bodyweight fitness tracker, and Handstand Journey, a popular mobile application designed as a fun introduction to the exciting world of arm balances.
I’m also the creator of a2k, the Windows 2000-inspired web component library. I’ve also contributed to several open-source projects, most notably the Open UI, where I led the site rewrite from Gatsby to Astro.
Component Odyssey is everything I’ve learnt about web development and component library development condensed down into a fun and highly interactive course.
Fun fact: Before starting my career as a web developer, I worked in the family chip shop in South-East London (it’s still going strong, so stop by for some fish and chips!).
I’m on Twitter and LinkedIn, so please reach out and say hi! 👋🏽