intro to react, with nextjs
put together a 1.5 hour workshop to teach React as part of nwHacks 2024's pre-hackathon workshop series.
my chief goal with this workshop was to take all participants that know a bit of html/js, hold their hands, and take to Valhalla (to posses skills to go from an empty vscode to deploying their own web app, independently and quickly). I wanted the workshop to be actually helpful for their hackaton project. I really wanted to teach such that the concepts became atomic for them, material was distilled (but not too shallow), and the participants were given ample time to write code themselves. Wanted the concepts to be taught with sufficient depth (but not too much to be fatiguing) so that the 1.5 hours of teaching unlocks hundreds of hours of practice.
Stackblitz was used so we didn't have to deal with "node isn't working on my computer" time drains, and NextJS was used so participants could quickly deploy the app (via Vercel). This allowed us to maximize time for participants to learn, apply, debug, and repeat.
I know, I know ("chill, it's not that deep bro, it was just a workshop"), but I really cared about it! due to snow shutting down campus we weren't able to host the workshop in-person as planned, yet well over 100 people showed up (and stayed until the end!) virtually