Lodash project freak-out

What’s the purpose of that project? To show future web developers that they are capable of writing their own libraries? That’s nice, but does this project really have to be this long and tedious?

I mean, there are 43 (!!!) steps needed to complete the project, every single one of them is a task to re-create already exsisting (in lodash library) utility method, such as .clamp() or .words() or .chunk(). What the heck? I don’t even know where to use all of that utility stuff, most of which I can either write in vanila js with ease, or just * here come the drums * import from lodash library.

Please, do hear my feedback - that’s probably the most boring and tiring way to introduce new library to students. Sure, that’s only my opinion…

Maybe you should create a separate mini-course for lodash/underscore? lodash is obsolete, so it’s fairly understandable why it doesn’t deserve it’s own course, but it is still not a great idea to dump it all in a single project right at the end of Javascript course.

Sorry for all that frustration, but it felt right for me to notice.

Hello, @islebeegun.

Thanks for sharing your opinion. Personally, I enjoyed the Re-creating the Lodash Library project. I liked coming up with my own ways of recreating the fuctions. It was also good practice for thinking through how to develop programming solutions to real tasks. Happy coding!

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Hello!

Showing the way of creating a library on your own is a great idea, I admit

What bothers me is the approach. As for me, mentioned project was way too long. I see no need in partial re-creation of popular library, as it doesn’t bring much to the table - if I have to save some time, I’ll implement lodash/underscore but not re-create it.

I guess it would have been better if they either provided smaller project deticated mainly for usage of re-created functions, or if they provided major introduction to some modern popular library. It looks like their intention was to kill two birds with one stone (to show the capability of re-creating and to introduce students to lodash), but that didn’t work well for me due to frustration caused by huge size and simplicity of the project.

I also have to notice, that all of that is my personal experience. I’m sure that many students will find this project helpful and interesting, and that’s great. But maybe there is a way to split this project into two separate projects:

  1. Writing your own library and using it in some benefitial way.
  2. Lodash walktrough project.

Both of those will be much shorter, thus easier to learn. For people like me, who already used to write personal utility libraries in other languages, separate lodash tutorial would be much more interesting, and they could still keep that part where they explain the way of creating personal library, which is great for beginners.

Enjoy the rest of your day and Cheers! :grin:

EDIT:
good example of creating useful personal library (RegEx email validator): https://youtu.be/LimOOe6I4eo

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I very much enjoyed the exercise as it challenged me to think on how to tackle different kind of problems. And yes it took me some time but I was quite happy when I finished it :smiley:

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I felt inappropriate at this point in the FullStack course in several ways. But ok, I went through with it.

The much bigger issue is:

  • Errors in the descriptions.
  • Terrible wording - even as a developer, I had to do some research here to find out exactly what it was even about; after that it was easy, why can’t you just describe it so simply?
  • Errors in the walkthrough video!!! This is really bad!
  • and again, combining lessons so far apart at this point without having gone into this one as much as others puts the learning effect way too much into perspective. Completely unsuitable for beginners! The crazy thing about it, not because they have no skill yet
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Having a very similar problem, about 40% of the way through the Front End Developer course, and I am completely stumped by this one. I have no real idea about any of this stuff and had to double check that I hadn’t accidentally selected a module from way further down the syllabus. Node programs etc? I don’t want to just copy the walk through video but I can barely make out what any of this is??

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I was fairly ground down by this one, to be honest. I kind of wonder if it’s a way of driving home the importance of using libraries like this, by demonstrating how tedious it would be to re-write all that code yourself. After all, the project only goes through ten of the methods in lodash, and some of them even incompletely. The full lodash implementation has over three hundred.

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@sensenel To add to your list of issues with the project I noticed that when I did the project on Codecademy versus doing it in VSC; on Codecademy’s site my code sometimes would start to throw errors and then when I would put the same EXACT code(literally copy and paste) into VSC it wouldn’t throw errors. I found that in order to avoid errors for LITERALLY no reason, I had to constantly hit the save button between writing each method when in previous projects I could just run the code with out having to constantly hit the save. Then again maybe this was done on purpose to get people like me more into the habit of making sure I was saving things to not lose code. Either way in the moment it made things very discouraging when I had a code that actually should work when on their site it would not work until I hit the save.

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Hi Ann,
thanks for the addition.
Mistakes happen, but that’s not necessarily my point. In other online courses or tutorials it is partly not better.
But what makes it a problem is that if they happen regularly, the more you are hindered in the learning process, because a lot of time has to be spent to find out if you made a mistake yourself or codeacadamy.
As you already described it. It’s just annoying and above all unnecessary!
I am also annoyed that some errors and misleading details have been pointed out in the forum for months, but nothing happens.
This is simply not acceptable for a paid learning platform.
And it does not matter whether premium or rather medium provider.
At the moment I can not afford the 37 euros every month …

Thank you and take care!

does it seem dumb to recreate methods that already exist within the library? yes. BUT I enjoyed this project because

  1. It was good practice for creating an object in general and creating functions, for loops, while loops and more!
  2. It makes you think about how the lodash methods actually work and what they’re really doing behind the scenes

I can see where you’re coming from but the point isn’t really to recreate the methods that already exist but rather practice the things you’re learning such as what i mentioned in 1.

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