Gouranga Das Samrat

  I once opened a client’s website and immediately felt like I was transported back to the MySpace era — text overlapping images, buttons dancing on hover like caffeinated frogs, and a rainbow of font colors that screamed “I just discovered CSS!” If you’ve ever felt secondhand embarrassment for a website, you know what I mean. It’s wild how just a few bad CSS decisions can tank the credibility of your entire site. People don’t trust ugly. And if your site looks janky, they bounce — fast. So, let’s call out these rookie (and sometimes criminal) CSS mistakes that make websites look like side projects from a college dorm room. Edited by me 1. Overusing !important Like It’s Hot Sauce Sure, it gets the job done. But you know what else does? Duct tape. Doesn’t mean you should wrap your whole site in it. .button { color : white !important ; background-color : red !important ; } Slapping  !important on everything is a cry for help. Fix your cascade. Organize your style...

  Let me tell you a dirty little secret. A few years ago, I built what I thought was a killer React app. Slick UI, modern components, everything modular. It looked perfect — on paper. But when I showed it to a non-tech friend? Her reaction: “Hmm… It looks… static.” STATIC. My precious React masterpiece? Compared to a PowerPoint slide. I cried internally. That’s when it hit me: good UI isn’t just about layout and color. It’s about feel. Motion. Vibes. You can have all the Tailwind in the world, but if your app moves like a cardboard cutout, you’ve already lost . Enter Framer Motion  — the secret sauce to making your app feel alive . Why Framer Motion? (And why I’d fight you if you say “just use CSS animations”) Listen, I love CSS. I do. But if you’ve ever tried coordinating complex UI animations in pure CSS, you know it’s like herding cats in the dark. Framer Motion makes motion logic feel like a conversation, not a war. You want to animate something on hover, exit, mount, or while ...

  It’s 2 AM, your code should work, but your component just stares back at you like a smug cat that knows you’re the problem. You Google, Stack Overflow, maybe even beg ChatGPT (hey, we’ve all been there) — but nothing clicks. I’ve been there. We all have. But here’s the thing: professional React devs have a stash of sneaky tricks. Little power moves that make code cleaner, bugs rarer, and life easier. They don’t teach these in tutorials. You only learn them in the trenches — or right here, if you’re lucky. Let’s crack open the toolbox. Photo by Lautaro Andreani on Unsplash 1. Use useRef For More Than Just DOM Access Most beginners think useRef is just for grabbing DOM nodes. Cute. const countRef = useRef ( 0 ); useEffect(() => { countRef.current++; console.log('Rendered', countRef.current, 'times'); }); Boom. Now you’re tracking renders without triggering re-renders. useRef Is your secret state that doesn't rerender the component? Like keeping a diary...

  You wrote some code. You ran it. And then your array went from a list of users to an angry collection of undefined , NaN And more bugs than a summer camping trip. Staring at map , filter , and reduce like they were ancient scrolls written in Elvish. Copy-pasting from Stack Overflow like a caffeinated zombie. Wondering why the heck splice just murdered half my data. But here’s the truth: mastering arrays is non-negotiable. If you’re fumbling with arrays, you’re fumbling with everything . Web apps, APIs, UIs — they all depend on your ability to tame this glorious beast. So buckle up. I’m about to drop 25 methods that will make you look at arrays like a surgeon looks at a scalpel. Edited by me 1. map() - Because Loops Are for Cavemen You want to transform every item in an array? Don’t go forEach your way to hell. map It is concise, expressive, and doesn’t mutate your data. It’s like therapy for arrays. const names = [ 'alice' , 'bob' , 'charlie' ]; const u...

  The source of this image is Chat GPT based on writing! Are you preparing for front-end developer interviews and looking for practical, hands-on ways to improve your HTML, CSS, and React skills? Whether you’re a beginner aiming to build confidence or an experienced developer brushing up on UI skills, small, targeted challenges can make a huge difference. In this article, I’ll walk you through some of the best free and low-cost resources that offer real-world front-end tasks — perfect for interview prep, portfolio building, and daily practice. 1. Frontend Mentor frontendmentor.io Frontend Mentor is one of the most popular platforms for hands-on HTML, CSS, and JavaScript challenges. You get beautifully designed templates (in Figma or image formats) and are asked to bring them to life using clean code. The platform offers difficulty levels ranging from newbie to expert, and it’s perfect for practicing responsiveness and semantic HTML. Bonus : You can even filter for React-based ...

  I’m debugging a React app for a client who insists the page should update “instantly” when users click a button. I’m knee-deep in state variables, loading flags, try-catch blocks, and a mental breakdown. My useEffect Looks like a spaghetti monster mated with a JSON dump. Then it hits me: Why the hell am I writing this boilerplate over and over again? That night, I built the one hook that changed everything: useAsync() . Edited by me The Nightmare That Birthed a Hook You’ve probably lived this too. Fetching data? Here comes a mess of: const [ data , setData] = useState( null ); const [loading, setLoading] = useState( false ); const [error, setError] = useState( null ); useEffect(() => { setLoading(true); fetch(url) .then((res) => res.json()) .then(setData) .catch(setError) .finally(() => setLoading(false)); }, [url]); Gross. Repetitive. Bug prone. So I ripped it out. Abstracted it. And gave it a new home: Say Hello to useAsync() Here’s what it...

  It’s 4 AM. I’m knee-deep in spaghetti code. My useEffect dependencies are screaming, the UI flickers like a cheap horror movie, and some mystery re-render is haunting my app every time I breathe. Classic React chaos. Ever been there? I was a decent developer. But React humbled me. Hard. Turns out, knowing useState And slapping on some JSX doesn’t mean you know what the hell you’re doing. It means you started . But to ship maintainable, scalable apps? You need patterns. Real ones. Here are 7 React patterns that slapped sense into me — and might just save your sanity too. Edited by me 1. The “Component as Function, Not Dumpster” Pattern You know what I’m talking about. That one component that does everything . Fetches data, renders UI, handles logic, scrolls the page, makes your coffee… Stop. Please. A component should do one thing well, not ten things poorly. The Fix: Extract. Abstract. Repeat. // Bad function UserProfile ( ) { const [data, setData] = useState ( null ); u...

It’s the only language I’ve used where [] == ![] it's true and where you can, typeof null and somehow get 'object' . But despite all its quirks (and there are many), there are a few core concepts that make life with JS not just easier, but saner. This isn’t some computer science flex. These are practical concepts that, once you understand them, make you write better, cleaner, and less buggy code. 1. Hoisting  Before you rage at your variables being undefined , understand this: JS hoists variable and function declarations to the top of their scope. But —  and this is important  —  only the declarations , not the assignments. Why? Because JS reads it like: This is also why let and const behave differently — they’re hoisted too, but live in the “Temporal Dead Zone” until declared. 2. Closures Closures are like little memory vaults for your functions. They allow functions to remember variables from the scope they were created in, even after that scope has gone. Why care? T...