In April of this year, likely due to the "Golden March and Silver April" phenomenon, I often saw front-end peers discussing job hunting. They were troubled about which company to join and were uncertain about job stability and prospects.
For me, who thought I had "seen through everything", I believed that as long as they didn't break out of their original mindset, no matter what choices they made, they would end up with the same results. However, no matter how I explained the limitations, they remained indifferent, which really made me anxious!
Thus, feeling exhausted, I wrote "The Last Advice to Front-end Engineers" and decided never to "meddle" again in trying to pull those who were about to jump into the fire pit—one last attempt to help, then let go and respect their destinies.
Although I firmly believed that the original path of front-end development was not viable, I didn't know how to relatively smoothly switch to another seemingly feasible path at that time.
Until mid-May, while I was tinkering with my home data center and probably thinking about decentralized issues, the term "Web3" suddenly popped into my mind, pointing me to that smoother transition path.
Exposure to Web3
Regarding "Web3", before May 14th, I had only heard of it and basically knew it existed without really understanding it.
But on that day, after installing MetaMask and experiencing a few dApps and getting a preliminary understanding of the ecosystem, I felt that the Web3 direction had a lot of growth potential and a promising future—
There are so few dApps for individual users, the user experience is so poor, and the infrastructure system is not yet mature. Of course, there is a lot of room for growth! 😂😂😂
When mentioning "Web3", another closely related term comes to mind—"DAO", which stands for "Decentralized Autonomous Organization"—a type of organizational form that seems to match my ideal.
Naturally, I immediately applied and joined a DAO initiated by Chinese people that matched my ideals.
Towards the end of the month, the DAO's manager forwarded in the group a "Web3 Front-end Bootcamp" organized by OpenBuild, which not only teaches the knowledge and skills needed to transition to Web3 full-stack development but is also free, with various rewards. I really couldn't find a reason not to sign up!
Learning in the Bootcamp
The bootcamp started on June 4th, entirely online, and except for the Q&A sessions, it was asynchronous, giving both teachers and learners a lot of freedom to arrange their time independently.
The overall positioning and design are more inclined to "help experienced Web2 front-end developers transition to Web3 front-end", including 6 basic courses and 3 advanced courses:
- Basic courses—covering the basic elements needed to develop a dApp based on EVM, and using the more common project types NFT market and DEX as practical exercises;
- Advanced courses—promoting products of stakeholders, and also helping developers who want to enter the industry to adapt to the current industry's variability as soon as possible.
Each class has corresponding homework, which needs to be submitted as a PR in the accompanying GitHub repository for the review personnel to check; those submitted before July 16th can receive rewards, with a maximum of 43 USDT.
If you encounter problems during learning and doing homework, there is a bootcamp-specific group for everyone to discuss and exchange in real time, which plays a role in mutual supervision while learning from each other.
Not only doing homework has rewards, but writing good learning notes and making other contributions to the bootcamp will also have rewards, but again, only before July 16th—As an active enthusiast, I naturally got them all～😎😎😎
Even though there are no rewards now, if you want to transition to Web3, the courses of this bootcamp are still worth looking at; it's best to follow and do the homework, and as one of the reviewers, I will try my best to correct it.
For more of my experiences during the bootcamp, see the learning notes "How to Build a dApp as a Smart Contract Newbie" and "OpenBuild Web3 Front-end Bootcamp Review".
Gains from the Bootcamp
This more than a month's bootcamp experience had a significant impact on me and was a milestone in my life because the gains from multiple perspectives looked quite good—
The most basic and important thing is to achieve the initial goal of signing up for the bootcamp—to transition to Web3 full-stack development—although I have just crossed the threshold, I can now independently develop a complete dApp, laying the foundation for participating in hackathons next.
Since I actively communicated with others in the group during the learning process and occasionally gave suggestions to the organizers, I was absorbed into the "teaching assistant" team to help review homework.
Later, I "fiercely" reviewed and merged hundreds of PRs, indirectly teaching some people the skills of using Git and the precautions for open-source collaboration.
Given my outstanding performance, including the rewards for doing homework and writing learning notes, I finally received more than 500 USDT at the end of the camp, which should be the most.
My activity during the bootcamp had some influence, and I established connections and gradually became familiar with others, including the founder of the organizer OpenBuild.
Taking this bootcamp as a lead, I gave some more systematic suggestions to OpenBuild and slightly envisioned its future development direction; perhaps seeing that I was willing to work together, I was pulled into the PMC.
After multiple communications and exchanges, at least I think a deep cooperative relationship can be established between me and OpenBuild—formally independent but actually closely connected.
Summary
As a Web front-end engineer who has been struggling for more than ten years, I firmly do not see a good future for traditional Internet Web front-end development; by chance, I found the Web3 industry that can maximize smooth migration.
Since then, I decisively decided to transition to Web3 full-stack development, that is, in addition to the original Web front-end knowledge and skills, I also need to learn and master smart contract development, and accumulate relevant project experience on this basis.
By deeply participating in the "Web3 Front-end Bootcamp" organized by OpenBuild, I not only achieved the basic goal of "transitioning" but also gained many additional benefits, with very sufficient positive feedback!
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