by Alex Banks
I’ve been a web developer for a long time. I built my first website in 1996. It had a Perl guest book. I posted some pictures of my high school graduation on this website, and I was pretty sure I was famous. I could go to your computer and make a pictures of me and my friends appear on your screen (if you had the Netscape browser). I didn’t think this was much different than having my own TV show. I was hooked, and I knew I was going to become a web developer.
Throughout the years, I’ve had to learn a lot of new technologies: ColdFusion, XML, C#, .NET, Node.js, and React to name a few. No matter what the technology or new language is, there are 3 things that I immediately need to know how to code in order to get my job done. First, I need to know how to get data from the browser all the way to the database and back. Second, I need to know how to get a file from the browser to the file system. And third, I need to know how to identify the users. Once I know how to do these things, I am confident that I will succeed with the new technology.
It’s been over 20 years, and these are still the things that you need to know how to do with any new web technology. You have to send and receive data. You have to authorize and authenticate users. You should be able to upload and serve files. There will be a lot more to learn on your journey into that technology or language, but when you have those skills in place, you can start building apps. Nothing can teach you faster than the process of actually writing code.
Last year, Eve Porcello and I designed the GraphQL Workshop with one goal in mind: building confidence. We want to make sure that you succeed with GraphQL. Teaching is our full-time job, so we're constantly iterating on materials to ensure that the content you get is up to date and optimized for the audience.
We’ve designed a hands-on exercise where we challenge you to build a server. You will send GraphQL operations to a server and receive data. You will write the code to authenticate users. And, you will learn how to pass files to a GraphQL service. Together, we build a full stack GraphQL application, because we want to make sure that you leave this workshop ready to start working with GraphQL.
Hope to see you in class!