What do you do with your user’s password? Do you store it into the database?

You don’t!

You should never store the raw password into your application.

Some badly coded websites store the raw password into their database.

They store the actual password and even send you via email:

This means your password is at risk.

(by the way, I didn’t code that website, I used a plugin called DAP in WordPress)

For the last few weeks I have taken a deep dive into the JavaScript programming language. Earlier this year I decided to work with Node.js so that I can work on just one language for the front end and the back.

I am now going in deep with JS. It’s fun.

I am following this collection of 33 Concepts in JS which is really helping me a LOT. I am tackling about one concept a day. One thing leads to another and I am spending most of my YouTube hours watching JS related videos and reading articles.

Staying focused in one language is helping me learn it quicker and soon I will become a master of it.

It’s not very easy to focus you know, every week I think about checking out another language. Languages like Go, Python, Kotlin, teases me in my YouTube feed.

There are some weird parts of JavaScript, which sometimes turn me off, but then again when I learn a new concept I get back up at it. I am glad I did not quit Node.js when I was getting bored with it.

As I mentioned before, I am not a big fan of JavaScript and predict it will be replaced in the near future. But until that time comes up (maybe in 5-10 years) why not be really good at it while it’s thriving?

So last week I put together a reddit like site, a clone of reddit as you can say. This is my first MERN stack application I am putting out to the world. I pretty much did a rush work and cut a lot of corners, just to get it out there and see how it goes.

For those who don’t know, MERN stands for Mongo database, Express framework, React.js framework and Node.js runtime environment. Together they create a software stack for building custom web application.

Now that’s all the technical stuff, let me share what’s exactly I mean by all this..

As funny and absurd as it sounds, I think it’s a similar feeling. I chased node, I tried to figure it out. I dreamt of building stuff with node. Eventually I figure it out. I learned how to build stuff with it. Then slowly I got bored with it. Looks like the honeymoon period is over 🙁

This is actually an interesting take on learning code.

And this also happened with me when learning other languages!

Last season I built a twitter clone in Node.js. It’s a social media web application built with Node.js, Express, Mongoose and Passport.js.

I deployed the app into a live server in Heroku, making it my first live Node/Express app.

I first shared the link onto the Node.js Facebook group for feedback. I also asked people not to attack it.

Here’s the app in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMIU9cG4qmw

So after launching the site, so many things I realized for the first time. Let me start with the positive first:

JavaScript, I like it, I love to build things with it, but I am not a fanboy. JS is the de facto language of the web. The web browsers only understands JavaScript. For this reason, web developers all around the globe has to learn this language.

I chose Node.js to build the backend of my web application, just so that I can use a single language to build both the front and the back.

I am not a fanboy of this language, and neither should you.

The first thing you learn when building a web application is CRUD, Create Read, Update and Destroy. I was learning Node.js to build the backend of my application. The first few lessons were about creating data, and then editing it.

In MongoDB mongoose, there are some handy commands for creating, editing items. Let’s say I have a blog post which I created. To edit it, I call the .findOneAndUpdate() method for editing the existing collection.

I soon figured out there must be a .removeOne() or .deleteOne() method to delete an item from the database collection.

I gave that a try.

Last week I ran into a real world problem.

It’s hard to keep track of my washed and dirty clothes. I have no idea how long it’s been since last wash. So I needed to track them by making a list and counting the dates.

The first idea is obviously writing them down on paper, but then I thought why not use my JavaScript skills to build an app to track it?

We have limited hours everyday.

In any given day, we can’t always utilize every hour of the day. To get the most done, you must quit many things. You must quit projects, say “NO” to things, so you can succeed at your goals.

We are always being reminded not to quit, just go for it, just do it. Any motivational seminar, video or quote tells us to never quit.

But does this kind of motivation really works?

It doesn’t, here’s why: