Hi there!
Welcome to my third blog post. Today, we're going to take a break, get back to the present, and I will reveal a little dirty secret about junior developers. It's just us here, so please keep this information to yourselves.

The truth is, We junior developers don't usually start our projects from scratch. Yes, you heard that right. We often rely on guides and tutorials found online. Each of us, when we begin our coding journey, dreams of creating something big, maybe the next Facebook, and it seems like it could be done in just a few days. But we quickly realize that even putting together a simple website requires hours of hard work.

I'm not here to judge; a good guide can teach you a lot. But it's important to remember that merely copying code line by line or tweaking the style, images, and text is not enough. When I started my blog, I used a tutorial to learn how to integrate sanity.io with my Next.js 14 project. And trust me, even though there are hundreds of thousands of tutorials on the internet, working with the latest technology has its limitations in this regard. But I still found what I was looking for. I realised that once I had connected the backend and frontend of my application, I could handle the rest. Since discovering Tailwind CSS, it's been love at first sight.

The real challenge begins when you want to add a feature not mentioned in any tutorial or in the tutorial you haven't used when making your project. For me, this challenge was to integrate a comments section functionality. My database from the tutorial didn't include comments at all. I had to adjust the database, add forms, and create components to display it on the site; the next step would be to send the form to the database. It's not as simple as it sounds, as it requires adding a new API key and changing permissions. At the very end, once we can send and store comments in the database, we still have to display them on the website. That is a lot of work. But the comments section was my top priority. Interaction with readers is just as important as the blog post itself. Every comment reinforces the idea that we're not just writing for ourselves but for someone who's investing their precious time in the hope of learning or being entertained.

Here's how my day went: As usual, after putting the kids to bed and cleaning up from the evening's fun, I sat down to work. I started searching online for how to add a comment section and display it on my site. Reading in the documentation that the comment functionality is still in beta made me break out in a cold sweat. I immediately turned to GPT for help but quickly found out that its knowledge was outdated. This is where the real struggle, learning, and satisfaction begin when something starts working. Because the guide ends long before you find what you need, and even if you find a tutorial about comments, it might refer to a completely different project structure. In programming, most things can be done in many ways. You have to refer to documentation, dive into Stack Overflow, break down complex problems, set a plan of action, establish priorities, and solve one problem at a time. And at some point, you might wonder if you really need comments on your site or if LinkedIn comments would suffice. Today's battle was long; it's 3 AM, and I have to wake up in 4 hours to take the kids to school. But I won today's battle. I solved most of my problems one by one. Sure, there are still things to consider, like security against various attacks, but that's a plan for another battle.

Today, I want to say that the satisfaction of implementing changes in your project, not just following any guide, is an incredible feeling. I remember how just a few months ago, basic things seemed so complicated. This shows the progress I've made and reaffirms that I'm on the right path. So, with great joy, I announce that I invite you to the comment section below and look forward to sharing my next post soon. Cheers!