Side project，2015 - now

Since I was a front end engineer, I try to keep my work simple and be eager to the latest technologies. As a result, I usually write side projects to experiment with those new technologies. All side projects can be found in my github and mikojs.

Expo，2022.6 - now
TBD

Meepshop，2018.1 - 2022.2

Beside bugs fixing and new features developing, colleagues and I added frameworks to make our work be done quicker and easier to maintain. We used Next.js to handle CSR and SSR, and also chose Typescript as our type checker. For easier use of Graphql, we used Apollo-client to control data flow in the front end. Based on Graphql and Typescript, it's easy for us to create fake data before the back end engineers finish their jobs. As a result, we could minimize development with Storybook.

On the other hand, we had many components. So, Lerna is picked to manage our component packages. Lerna is a completely different development model. Though we spent time adapting it, it greatly improved our jobs.

Due to the change of frameworks, we spent a lot of time adding those frameworks to our projects and it's a very challenging job. For example, Redux was used to control data flow in the past, but Apollo-client is more suitable with Graphql. Thus, to avoid breaking change, we replaced Redux with Apollo-client step by step. It's a hard challenge for me but I enjoy the process of building a more maintainable project.

Freelancer，2015 - 2017.12

During this period, many frameworks were announced, but authorities still don't know which one is the best. As a result, when I was a freelancer, I tried to use those frameworks to find the best way to make my projects faster and easier to maintain. In 2015 - 2017, I wrote about five projects, but most of those websites were written by the new maintainers. So I don't list those websites here, and just summarize how I build those projects. At the beginning, React, babel and Webpack were just used in websites, and I also used those frameworks to build a website. In this project, I learned how to use Webpack and code splitting.

The next project, I used Redux to handle the data flow, React-router to handle client routing and Express to handle the server-side rendering. In the past, we didn't have any framework to implement SSR and CSR. However in this project, I tried to implement  those concepts and use Radium to handle the style of the website.

Next projects, I started to build some npm packages to accelerate my jobs. I build a components library, a server-middleware library and a database library. Most of those projects aren’t maintained, but I learned how to build npm packages. This stage is very important to me. I start to think about how to build a system, not just a single project.

In the final project. I used Graphql and Relay to handle the data flow. Eslint, Prettier and lint-staged kept my code style consistent. Jest tested my code to avoid unexpected problems. Circleci and PM2 deployed my code continually.

At the end of being a freelancer, many frameworks appeared and helped us build websites more easily. Learning new frameworks needed lots of time. It's difficult to strike a balance between exploring new technology while writing a project. So  I decided not to be a freelancer, and tried to be a technical staff.