Stefi Rosca

👩‍💻 Frontend Developer, 🌍 traveler and⛷️ Skier

Recurse Center Alumn

🪄 How to make good things happen: know your brain, enhance your life by Marian Rojas Estape - book notes

Goodreads: Cómo hacer que te pasen cosas buenas: Entiende tu cerebro, gestiona tus emociones, mejora tu vida * I've read this book in Spanish. ⛰ What It's About This book gives easy tools to help you understand your brain, manage your feelings, and make your…

🗺️ Discover the world challenge: A journey through books and bites

Here are the two lists of all the books as well as a list with foods and/or restaurants from my around the world challenge . I will add recommendations as I go. If you have any recommendations please add them here: book recommendations or/and food…

🌎 My 3 simple smart steps to explore the world: read, eat, write!

When is the best time to start a new project—especially when you have so many other things to do? The answer is simple: right now! One thing that’s always helped me grow is “to learn based on my curiosity and joy, rather than external pressures and fears…

📈 Getting started with financial investments - books and courses

Initially, investing felt quite intimidating and it was something I kept putting off. I believed I needed a large amount of money to get started and the guidance of a financial advisor to help me understand the landscape. I wasn’t aware that I could begin with…

🧠 Building a second brain by Tiago Forte - Book Notes

Goodreads: Building a Second Brain ⛰ What It's About A great book I highly recommend to everyone. It discusses how to take notes, organize them, and start using them to clear up headspace and overcome the fear of ideas getting lost. The idea of sharing…

🎯 Stefi’s Shorts #11 - Be kinder

Dear friends, One of my goals this year is to be kinder. At first, I thought it could just be: “Be kind”. Then I thought I was already trying to be kind day in and out. The actual challenge would be to go one step further. I see so many people that are mean…

🧑‍💻 Essential reads for new software engineers

Working as a software engineer is not only about knowing how to code. That is a big part of it, but besides this, many other aspects make the role. Plenty of the skills and processes that are important in the role as well as for your growth are not taught in a…

🏅 Stefi’s Shorts #10 - Do it anyways

Dear friends, Welcome to edition 10! A great milestone 🥳  Sitting down and writing this every week hasn’t been easy. It’s now that I understand that when you get started you might have a lot of ideas, excitement, and energy. Keeping at it and showing up is…

🧑‍💻 Navigating Career Transitions: Is a Bootcamp Right for Me?

Disclaimer: I completed a 6-month full stack development bootcamp in February 2020. I share at the end of the article my experience with attending a bootcamp and why I chose this over going to university. TL;DR: The answer to the question I raised isn't as…

🦁  Stefi’s Shorts #9 - the person you are

Dear friends, This week, while sorting through some old notes, I stumbled upon a quote from Grey’s Anatomy that I want to share with you all: On average, our hearts beat 70 times per minute. In the same 60-second period, we blink between 10 and 15 times…

🦎 Stefi’s Shorts #8 - find your home

Dear friends, Another week has passed, and I’m starting to slowly notice the signs of Spring with trees starting to blossom, which I do enjoy. I’ve been diving into "Building a Second Brain" by Tiago Forte , and what an insightful book on note-taking this is…

🇬🇧 Stefi’s Shorts #7 - read more

Dear friends, This week I got to see my favorite singer, Ryan who sings under the name of Sleeping at Last, perform live and it has been such a filling experience. I randomly discovered Ryan through Grey’s Anatomy. When shazaming the song played it took me to…

👟 Stefi’s Shorts #6 - the extra mile

Dear friends, This week has flown by. Last Thursday I felt something odd with my stomach and went to bed earlier but didn’t rest at all. On Friday I pushed through until midday and then went to bed early. Took me about 2 days to get back to feeling better…

🐻 JSHeroes - The tech conference I’m looking forward to this year

Last year I attended my first in-person tech conference, JSHereos in Cluj, Romania. It was an experience that exceeded all my expectations. I left with valuable insights and knowledge to improve my skills, while at the same time connected with other…

🔨 Stefi’s Shorts #5 - patience and consistency

Dear friends, Welcome to the 5th edition of my newsletter! 5 weeks in, I can’t believe it! Now it’s time to figure out how to make it an actual newsletter where people can subscribe via email. Since my twenties, I've always dreamed of becoming a YouTuber. This…

🌄 Engineering management for the rest of us by Sarah Drasner - Book Notes

Goodreads: Engineering Management for the Rest of Us ⛰ What It's About A book that provides leadership tools and ideas on how to lead as an engineering manager Talks about thoughtful leadership . Sarah Drasner shares lessons she learned while moving into a…

⏳ Stefi’s Shorts #4 - Protect your time

Dear friends, I’ve realized that Friday isn't the best day for sending out a newsletter. If I don’t have time to finish it in the morning I end up spending my evening on it and this doesn’t align with my weekly plan given Friday evenings are reserved to spend…

🎾 The inner game of tennis by Timothy Gallwey - Book Notes

Goodreads: Inner Game of Tennis ⛰ What It's About Insightful: Mental techniques and strategies for improving focus, concentration, and overall mental toughness especially when playing elite sport. Simple: Short and to the point book discussing Sports…

🎾 Stefi’s Shorts #3 - Do it for yourself

Dear friends, This hasn’t been an easy week but it’s ending well which is the important part. Sometimes luck is on your side, don’t take that for granted. A few weeks ago I read the book Inner Game of Tennis . This was quite a random choice as I only played…

🇵🇹 Stefi’s Shorts #2 - On taking risks

Dear friends, This week, I had the opportunity to participate in a company offsite in Lisbon, Portugal. As an introvert, meeting everyone initially felt a bit overwhelming, especially since we operate as a remote company. However, I found myself genuinely…

🌱 Stefi’s Shorts #1 - Just get started

Dear friends, The past weekend I was listening to a Ali Abdaal’s Deep Dive podcast episode Someday Is Today: Achieve Your Goals And Live Without Regret - Matthew Dicks and in this conversation, Matthew mentioned that from his experience coaching people…

😱 A year without Instagram

At the end of 2023, I struggled to complete the reading challenge I signed up for on Goodreads. It's not that I dislike reading; it was more about not making enough time for it. Realizing I spent a significant amount of time on my phone, especially on social…

💸 Rare financial advice: the power of giving back

This year, I dedicated a significant amount of time to understanding personal finances as I wanted to know how to make the most of my savings and navigate different financial instruments. Along this path, I started reading Tony Robbins’s Unshakeable: Your…

🚣 10 Must-know VS Code shortcuts

Moving from keyboard to mouse to perform some action can sometimes be annoying. VS Code has some really nice keyboard shortcuts to help keep me in flow when working with code. In this article, we'll explore 10 must-know VS Code shortcuts that I use on a day to…

🏋️ 12 Beginner friendly Codewars challenges in JS

Codewars katas, coding exercises, felt really intimidating. Even though I started with small easier challenges in the last weeks of my bootcamp at first I struggled. I didn't really understand what the kyu's were and wasn't sure where to start. Luckily I…

🥐 Giving my first tech talk while still learning to code

Disclaimer: you never stop learning to code. TL;DR: Sharing my experience of submitting a talk proposal, getting accepted, preparing the talk and flying to Paris to deliver it. It wasn't a walk in the park. If you prefer to just watch the talk I gave about…

🚠 My journey into tech

TL;DR: The path to becoming a developer isn't a walk in the park at least it wasn't for me but as you will see, not all obstacles are unshakeable. Did you ever want to do something that people like you aren't supposed to do? I knew early on that I wanted to…

🧰 Setting up your username and email in Git at your first dev job

One of the things I had to do when getting my first job was configuring Git. Unless you setup your name and email address Git will take it from the environment. This is important because every Git commit uses this information and if it's not setup correctly it…

🦩 5 Free coding resources that helped me get my first frontend developer job

When I wanted to learn how to code I thought the only available options were either to go to university or attend a bootcamp. Given I wasn't sure if this was what I wanted to do long-term, I wasn't ready to invest. Luckily I found out about some great free…

✨ 7 Tips & tricks to make your console.log() output stand out

1. Styling your console.log Is this necessary? Probably not, but if you want to leave an easter egg message on your portfolio website's console why not a styled one? You never know who is looking. Check out mine at stefi.codes To do this you would us the…

🤺 7 Useful VS Code extension for junior web developers

In my early days of coding I used to get quickly frustrated when my code didn't run. It felt like I was doing everything right but the web app still didn't work. Mostly it was a silly mistake, some sort of typo, a missed comma, bracket or semicolon. This made…

The difference between setTimeout and setInterval

Until now I was only using setInterval not being aware of setTimeout. To be transparent I didn't need to use it until working on the Speed Writing Game Here's where setTimeout made a difference. I could have gotten way using setInterval for what I needed but…

React Router how to dynamically updated search parameters of an URL

The SkiBuddies app is a web app one which one can search for skiers and snowboarders with a few filters. When doing this search I wanted the data to be shown in the URL which meant I needed to find a way to update the URL search parameters dynamically. The URL…

Understanding CSS display: inline; block; inline-block

Understand CSS display

Drawing a Christmas robot with pure CSS

Looking back it's funny how I used to look at CSS art on codepen and think that I would never be able to do something similar. Around this time codepen sents a newsletter including a holdiday #CodePenChallenge . Those were impressive but not something I would…

CSS selectors - Who gets priority?

I always wondered how CSS selectors get priority. I knew it was classes above element selectors but was never very sure about the rest until recently when I did a CSS Fundamentals course by Kevin Powell on Scrimba . It might sound strange but I was not…

Why setting the focus outline: 0 on a button is bad

I’ve learned this thanks to the fact that I’ve shared learning about outline: 0 . I was quite annoyed by the blue ring around my buttons whenever they were clicked but didn’t spend much time looking into it. I’m not a designer so I let it go easily. While…

Using CSS Transitions

Recently Florin Pop shared a course he worked on and just launched on Udemy, 50 Projects In 50 Days - HTML, CSS & JavaScript . Given the great promotion, 10 euros for the course, I decided to purchase it in support of his work. The idea of the course is to…

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