#255 - Your First Open Source Project: A Weekend with Kyle Simpson’s Code

Develop Yourself

This episode introduces a weekend project that will give you authentic experience working with existing code—a crucial skill that most tutorials and coding platforms simply don't teach.

Using Kyle Simpson's YouPeriod GitHub repository, you'll learn to navigate a codebase written by someone else, which is exactly what you'll do in your first development job. This particular project is perfect for beginners because it uses fundamental web technologies (HTML, CSS, and vanilla JavaScript) rather than complex frameworks like React or TypeScript.

Here's the Github repo: https://github.com/getify/youperiod.app
This weekend project will teach you more about real development work than weeks of guided exercises.

If you're completely new to JavaScript, check out our Dev30 program at dev30.xyz, where you can learn the fundamentals and beyond.

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Chapters

1. Introduction to Weekend JavaScript Project (00:00:00)

2. Understanding Open Source and JavaScript Basics (00:01:42)

3. Working with the uperiodapp Repository (00:03:13)

4. Exploring and Extending the Codebase (00:06:14)

5. Building a Strong JavaScript Foundation (00:10:30)

6. Episode Conclusion and Resources (00:12:04)