Netlify helps you make and host websites for free. Go to their website to sign up for a free account. Ask their AI agent to help you build a website, then click Build Now. Post the link to your website in the comments below and explain why you're building it. Ask me questions about writing better prompts to help your AI build better apps, or ask me how to add new features to your app using your own code. 🤙🏾

👋 Hello and welcome to Web Art & Science Discussions. I'm Daniel Archibald. Full-stack engineer, AWS Certified Solutions Architect, serverless nerd, and — maybe most importantly — a completely self-taught developer who figured it all out the hard way so you don't have to. No CS degree. No bootcamp. Just years of building real things, breaking them, and shipping them anyway. - What do I actually do for work? By day I work in cybersecurity and identity infrastructure — building NIST IAL2-compliant verification systems for Fortune 500 clients. Think: the code that confirms you are actually you at a federal compliance level. By night (and weekends, and honestly most of the time) I'm writing, and hacking on side projects. I've built a YouTube trending scraper, a GitHub-powered blog engine, Postman automation suites, and a pile of quirky apps that exist mostly because I thought they'd be cool. JavaScript and serverless are my weapons of choice. Making art is the philosophy. I've also given public tech talks — including my career transition story: "From Grocery Aisles to Coding" for Black Orlando Tech - Why did I build this community? Here's the thing: most dev education is built around getting you employed. Land the job. Crack the interview. Pass the test. And I will help you do that — I know exactly what it takes. But that's not why I love this stuff. I believe the web is a human-first medium. It's art. It's expression. It's a living, breathing expansion of what it means to create something and share it with the world. Somewhere along the way, we turned it into a business tool first and forgot that part. This community exists to fix that. I want you to get the job and fall in love with digital craft as a passion. Most people hit week one and realize they were missing something they didn't have a word for yet. That word is art. - What do I want to build? Right now I'm working on a game — a space where community members can hang out and explore the web together. Not a Discord. Not another LMS. Something weirder and more interesting than that. You'll see.

So glad you're here. This is a space for developers at every level — whether you're just starting out or leveling up your skills. --- 👾 What We're All About: Some of the best learning happens when you build something fun. Projects like this DIY Pokédex (built with React + PokeAPI) and this React Multi-Step Form are perfect examples of the kind of hands-on work we celebrate here. They're simple enough to be approachable, but packed with real, transferable skills. --- 🤓 What You'll Learn: • Fetching from public APIs — calling external data sources, handling async responses, and managing errors gracefully • React state management — understanding how component state drives your UI, from search inputs to dynamic renders • Front-end design fundamentals — building cards, forms, and layouts that actually look good • Reading & writing clean code — these projects are small enough to fully understand, which makes them great for building good habits --- 🤔 Where This Applies in the Industry: Every production app you'll ever work on — from startups to FAANG — uses these exact patterns: • REST API integration is foundational to virtually every web and mobile product • State management (whether in React, Vue, or something else) is a core interview topic and daily skill • Clean, component-based front-end architecture is what separates junior devs from mid-level engineers • Multi-step forms? You'll find those in onboarding flows, checkout screens, and SaaS dashboards everywhere These aren't just toy projects — they're your proof of concept. --- 🏆 Community Challenge: Think you've got what it takes to improve on one of these projects? > Implement one new feature — get $20 off my Premium AWS Cert Tier! 🎓 It can be anything: a loading spinner, a favorites list, a comparison mode, dark mode, a progress bar — surprise me. If you're not sure where to start or need help brainstorming an idea, just reach out to me directly. I'm always happy to point you in the right direction.