I’ve decided to hop back into the game, and build a new app. I’m not announcing what it is yet because it’s no where near ready, but I really like the idea.

I’ve also decided to be really trendy, and use the latest in software development tools. This kills many birds with one stone:

  1. Challenge myself to learn a new programming paradigm as recommended by my favorite programming book
  2. Keep up to date with some of the newest, coolest toys on the block
  3. Connect more personally with the customers of the products we build at TokBox to better understand their needs in modern JS development

And I have to say that while I know we have a long way to catch up as far as TokBox technical content goes, we’re miles ahead of the current state of the coolest toys on the block in JS world.

In full disclosure, I’ve only tried the React.js stack, and not the Angular stack. I’ve also avoided Backbone, underscore, and many others. And so this may not be true in other places.

But I’m fascinated at how far ahead of the documentation and developer experience Facebook has moved on these projects. Tutorials written six months ago are grossly out of date with the latest code bases. GitHub issues that look like the problem I’m having have actually nothing to do with what’s in front of me.

I jumped into this world because I saw that the folks at Automattic had done so for Calypso. I figured I’d follow their lead. But I’m getting swamped.

What’s the killer resource folks are using? What’s the bare minimum project that I should be starting from? What’s the Slack channel I should subscribe to to learn bottoms up?

Any and all help is greatly appreciated.