Educating new frontend developers with Xata

Teri Eyenike is a software engineer and technical writer based out of Lagos, Nigeria. When not creating content, he really enjoys mentoring and speaking at conferences. Teri is an extremely valued member of the Xata community and has been with us since the very beginning. Not only did he first start using Xata during our private beta back in 2021, but he is also one of the winners of the last content hackathon.

Teri is both a software engineer at Andela and a well respected author at the technical content marketing firm Hackmamba. Hackmamba produces a variety of content ranging from deep technical topics to beginner tutorials. This is where Teri’s passion lies, in helping people learn new technologies and empowering them to build with it. This also provides Teri an opportunity to learn new languages, frameworks and tools on a regular basis.

What I like about Xata is that there’s not much of a learning curve around it. You can easily integrate it with different technology stacks without having to comb through documentation.
Teri Eyenike - Software Engineer

For the most part, databases are pretty language agnostic. This provides a great educational opportunity to build content around a standardized database while building code examples and applications unique to each language and framework.

In Teri’s hackathon-winning tutorial, he walks developers through building an efficient waitlist application with Xata and Next.js.

As a frontend developer, Teri tends to create educational content within the JavaScript and Python ecosystems. In his latest tutorial, Teri is working on a new open source LinkTree alternative, LinkPlant. This is built using Django and will be the basis of future technical blogs and tutorials.

Teri continues to push the boundaries of technical, educational content by pursuing his passion to learn and exposing those learning to his audience. If you'd like to dig in, you can view all his content on dev.to.

During our conversation, we asked Teri to share some of his favorite parts about Xata and where he thinks we can improve. Here are some of the reasons why Teri continues to choose Xata:

• Easy import. When building technical tutorials for others to follow, getting data in can sometimes be the most difficult part. CSV import makes it very easy for his readers to get started.
• File attachments. With file attachments simply being an extension of the database, he reduces the number of tools required to build applications in his tutorials. No longer requiring a standalone service to deliver images.
• Collaborate. Xata’s interface makes it really easy to collaborate with the entire team, regardless of technical experience.

When working in a team it’s very easy for other developers and non-developers to collaborate on the data in Xata’s table view.
Teri Eyenike - Software Engineer

When asked what he’d like to see from Xata, here’s what Teri shared:

• Django support. As Teri dives deeper into the world of Python, he thought it might be nice for Xata to have more native support for Django.
• Webhooks. There were a few use cases where Teri would have liked to receive a notification every time a record is added. Outside of native support in Xata, webhooks would have made this pretty straight forward.

Do you have a similar story or community contribution you'd like to share? Send us an email or ping us on Discord if you'd like to be featured in our community spotlight. Until then, happy building 🦋