egghead.io developer chats Kent C. Dodds Chats About How Epic React was Designed for Learner Success
Epic React is Kent's attempt at making the biggest impact on the world. It's Kent's philosophy that he can have a much larger impact by teaching other people to write excellent software instead of just doing it himself.
Epic React has been in the making for a long time. Its methods are much more thought out than your average course. You can't just throw it on your Chromecast and 2x your way through all of the videos. You have to put in the work. Kent uses the proven methods from the book "Make It Stick" which have you trying to solve the problems yourself first before Kent provides his instruction.
Epic React has 350 videos. How did Kent even begin to climb that hill? Kent didn't think Epic React would be as epic as it is today when he started. When he started thinking about doing Epic React, he thought it'd be like Testing JavaScript. He made Testing Node for the Testing JavaScript relaunch and he used a workshop format instead of the egghead style and it was a big success. So he decided to do the same thing, but for React.
Having a team also made a huge difference. A lot of people do this themselves but Kent worked with a production team. There are so many advantages. Lots of instructors struggle with all the extra stuff you have to do when selling content that isn't creating the content. The production team let Kent focus on the content and the hype. Kent did not want to deal with editing, support, payments, design, or copy. He wants to take knowledge from his head and put it into other people's heads.
What's the next Epic Journey for Kent? He likes the idea of updating stuff. He plans on continuing to update Testing JavaScript. Kent also has a laundry list of ideas for future Epic React content!