Easy way to learn code!
when you're learning to code do you ever feel like you're stuck learning the same thing over and over again?
you might watch a tutorial video and by the end, you feel like you kind of get it. But when the next day rolls around you've no clue how any of it works anymore so you have to go back and re-watch the tutorial butt unfortunately this pattern keeps repeating you might feel like none of this knowledge is actually sticking in your brain and it can get very frustrating to feel like you're not getting anywhere so in this article I'm going to cover some common pitfalls that might be tripping you up and causing you to waste time when you are learning to code.
Now as a disclaimer keep in mind that there are no magical shortcuts that will transform you overnight into a coding expert. Even with good learning techniques, it's still going to take time to go from a beginner developer to a more advanced one.
Alright! Let's get into the advices:
1) don't learn randomly:
The first one is don't learn randomly, figure out a road map to follow if you're jumping around trying to learn Git one day CSS Custom Properties the next and JavaScript promises on the third, you may be setting yourself up for a lot of hardship, instead of picking things at random to learn look for a structured path that you can follow.
One path you can use is an article on my website called "Learn web development for absolute beginners". It shows you a simplified roadmap of the main skills that you'll need to learn and the order to learn them.
You can also go through an online Bootcamp curriculum like "freeCodeCamp", "Zero to mastery" or act you like.
The benefit of following a pre-made path is that you'll know what you need to learn and when and as you go from one step to the next you will be able to see your progress and feel like you're actually getting somewhere. Now as you're following your path you might be tempted to try to learn multiple things at the same time in order to get through everything more quickly.
But doing this may actually divide your attention and make it harder for that knowledge to stick.
2) don't try to learn everything all at once:
Don't try to learn everything all at once, but focus on learning one thing at a time. I recommend staying on one subject until you feel you have a decent grasp of the basics at least when you're starting out. For example, let's say you're learning HTML first. Once you feel like you know most of the common tags and can build a very basic HTML web page you can move on to learning CSS.
Then in the future, if you come across an Html tag that you're not familiar with you can take some time to learn about that specific tag.
3) Be an active learner:
Be an active learner don't just passively consume content, sitting back and watching an instructor go through the material without trying anything yourself is not going to get you very far. Instead, try to do some combination of taking new information and then trying it yourself in real life.
For example, I went through wes bos's CSS grid course back when I was first learning about grid, What I did was I would watch the video and try to code along with wes through the lessons.
If I didn't fully understand something I would go back and watch it again and after each lesson, I would pause the course and try to build the lesson examples on my own without looking back as much as possible.
This trying to create what you have just learned without looking at the source code is a great way to see how much you actually remember. And it will very quickly help you identify the weak points in your knowledge, so you can then go back and fill it in after the course was done.
I felt like had a basic grasp of the CSS grid but I wouldn't consider myself an expert by any definition and I think that's ok. Because I could try to use grid when building website layouts and if I ever got stuck on anything I could refer back to the course or other resources like Mozilla Developer Network. Learning new skills and coding is a combination of learning the knowledge and putting it into practice which brings me to second last advice ...!
4) Don't just memorize:
Don't just memorize stuff remember back in school when you were learning vocabulary words and history dates you might have studied lists of facts and memorized them so that you could regurgitate them for tests and quizzes. Now I'm not here to debate the pros and cons of rote memorization.
However, trying to learn HTML by just memorizing lists of all the HTML tags is not going to be very effective. Coding is an applicable skill not just a collection of abstract facts. Obviously, you do need to be able to remember things in order to use them, but you can learn flexbox a lot faster if you explore all the different properties by playing around in a code pen for a day or two as opposed to just memorizing the definition of flex-grow, no web developer is going to know everything off the top of their head.
I can attest to this as someone who worked in the industry for a long time and worked with other professional developers.
We all use Google or DuckDuckGo if you care about your privacy to look up stuff constantly, in a way stack overflow, MDN, and CSS tricks become kind of like an extension of your brain.
The goal of all this is to be able to build websites and if you need to look up stuff along the way that's perfectly fine everyone does it. And that brings me to final decision...!
5) Build Stuff:
I know everyone says this but it really is the best way to learn to code, watching tutorials and going through courses in the beginning, not the end of learning web development.
At my first web dev job. I would be given a project like building a landing page with a button and getting it to submit to a database now since this was my job I have to build it I didn't really have a choice and oftentimes I'll be given a task that I had no idea how to do, scary right!
The only solution was the jump right in and try my best. I would look stuff up and try things on my own and I ask for help when I really was stuck. Even though the process of figuring this all out may have been very painful at times. It was all worth it in the end, When I got to look at my finished website and this is one big benefit of learning by building projects.
Having a tangible goal in front of you is great because when you reach it you'll feel like you've really achieved something. If you are looking for project ideas don't worry because there are tons of them on the internet.
Search for things like "JavaScript project ideas" or "react project ideas" you get the picture. And personally, I always recommend FrontendMentor.io for front-end projects that are also great additions to your portfolio.
If you're currently learning to code, I really hope that this article has been helpful for you.
you might watch a tutorial video and by the end, you feel like you kind of get it. But when the next day rolls around you've no clue how any of it works anymore so you have to go back and re-watch the tutorial butt unfortunately this pattern keeps repeating you might feel like none of this knowledge is actually sticking in your brain and it can get very frustrating to feel like you're not getting anywhere so in this article I'm going to cover some common pitfalls that might be tripping you up and causing you to waste time when you are learning to code.
Now as a disclaimer keep in mind that there are no magical shortcuts that will transform you overnight into a coding expert. Even with good learning techniques, it's still going to take time to go from a beginner developer to a more advanced one.
Alright! Let's get into the advices:
1) don't learn randomly:
The first one is don't learn randomly, figure out a road map to follow if you're jumping around trying to learn Git one day CSS Custom Properties the next and JavaScript promises on the third, you may be setting yourself up for a lot of hardship, instead of picking things at random to learn look for a structured path that you can follow.
One path you can use is an article on my website called "Learn web development for absolute beginners". It shows you a simplified roadmap of the main skills that you'll need to learn and the order to learn them.
You can also go through an online Bootcamp curriculum like "freeCodeCamp", "Zero to mastery" or act you like.
The benefit of following a pre-made path is that you'll know what you need to learn and when and as you go from one step to the next you will be able to see your progress and feel like you're actually getting somewhere. Now as you're following your path you might be tempted to try to learn multiple things at the same time in order to get through everything more quickly.
But doing this may actually divide your attention and make it harder for that knowledge to stick.
2) don't try to learn everything all at once:
Don't try to learn everything all at once, but focus on learning one thing at a time. I recommend staying on one subject until you feel you have a decent grasp of the basics at least when you're starting out. For example, let's say you're learning HTML first. Once you feel like you know most of the common tags and can build a very basic HTML web page you can move on to learning CSS.
Then in the future, if you come across an Html tag that you're not familiar with you can take some time to learn about that specific tag.
3) Be an active learner:
Be an active learner don't just passively consume content, sitting back and watching an instructor go through the material without trying anything yourself is not going to get you very far. Instead, try to do some combination of taking new information and then trying it yourself in real life.
For example, I went through wes bos's CSS grid course back when I was first learning about grid, What I did was I would watch the video and try to code along with wes through the lessons.
If I didn't fully understand something I would go back and watch it again and after each lesson, I would pause the course and try to build the lesson examples on my own without looking back as much as possible.
This trying to create what you have just learned without looking at the source code is a great way to see how much you actually remember. And it will very quickly help you identify the weak points in your knowledge, so you can then go back and fill it in after the course was done.
I felt like had a basic grasp of the CSS grid but I wouldn't consider myself an expert by any definition and I think that's ok. Because I could try to use grid when building website layouts and if I ever got stuck on anything I could refer back to the course or other resources like Mozilla Developer Network. Learning new skills and coding is a combination of learning the knowledge and putting it into practice which brings me to second last advice ...!
4) Don't just memorize:
Don't just memorize stuff remember back in school when you were learning vocabulary words and history dates you might have studied lists of facts and memorized them so that you could regurgitate them for tests and quizzes. Now I'm not here to debate the pros and cons of rote memorization.
However, trying to learn HTML by just memorizing lists of all the HTML tags is not going to be very effective. Coding is an applicable skill not just a collection of abstract facts. Obviously, you do need to be able to remember things in order to use them, but you can learn flexbox a lot faster if you explore all the different properties by playing around in a code pen for a day or two as opposed to just memorizing the definition of flex-grow, no web developer is going to know everything off the top of their head.
I can attest to this as someone who worked in the industry for a long time and worked with other professional developers.
We all use Google or DuckDuckGo if you care about your privacy to look up stuff constantly, in a way stack overflow, MDN, and CSS tricks become kind of like an extension of your brain.
The goal of all this is to be able to build websites and if you need to look up stuff along the way that's perfectly fine everyone does it. And that brings me to final decision...!
5) Build Stuff:
I know everyone says this but it really is the best way to learn to code, watching tutorials and going through courses in the beginning, not the end of learning web development.
At my first web dev job. I would be given a project like building a landing page with a button and getting it to submit to a database now since this was my job I have to build it I didn't really have a choice and oftentimes I'll be given a task that I had no idea how to do, scary right!
The only solution was the jump right in and try my best. I would look stuff up and try things on my own and I ask for help when I really was stuck. Even though the process of figuring this all out may have been very painful at times. It was all worth it in the end, When I got to look at my finished website and this is one big benefit of learning by building projects.
Having a tangible goal in front of you is great because when you reach it you'll feel like you've really achieved something. If you are looking for project ideas don't worry because there are tons of them on the internet.
Search for things like "JavaScript project ideas" or "react project ideas" you get the picture. And personally, I always recommend FrontendMentor.io for front-end projects that are also great additions to your portfolio.
If you're currently learning to code, I really hope that this article has been helpful for you.
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