I stumbled my way through the basic algorithms, and am now getting ready to work on the random quote generator. Is it worth it to keep going back over the basic algorithms though? I feel like going back and looking at them I didn’t retain as much as I should.
I’m not in any kind of hurry to get this done, and I’d rather take longer and really understand it than just slam it all out and not retain what i should. Does it make sense to go over each one 3 or 4 times until I feel like I could easily teach it to someone else?
freecodecamp is not really set up for mastery - there are just enough exercises on one topic to keep you moving along and prepare for the next topic - there is hardly any in-depth explanation or supplementary material - just couple references to documentation here and there - you could end up spending a lot of time on the most basic concepts flitting from one reference to another - freecodecamp and in fact most internet references entirely skip over the theory and math of programming concepts - you can only find that in books and papers
the simplest question like what is a variable or what is a computer could entail days or weeks of research let alone questions like why is something the way it is for which you’ll need a lot more advanced knowledge to understand the context - are you prepared to do all of that to feel the confidence to easily teach someone?
i see where you’re going with this… I felt this way too when I first started out… I wanted to master this one concept first before I move forward and add a new concept to the mix. The thing is…as I moved forward, the more I learned, the more it helped me understand stuff I didnt grasp at first. Okay, that whole thing just confused me, let me back up.
When I first started to learn javascript, I took some courses on PluralSight by Kyle Simpson, I didn’t know it at the time, but his You Dont Know Javascript book series is a major hitter in the JS community…so, Im learning about loops and objects and functions and all this stuff and at the end of the course I felt like I knew nothing, decided the course sucked, looked around and found FCC.
As I moved through FCC and saw how these little parts I learned from Kyle worked together as a whole then it ALL started to make sense…and on reflection, the course didnt suck at all…it was actually pretty amazing! Its just that I needed to know not only what the puzzle pieces were, but how they all fit to work together to fully understand what I was looking at.
So yeah…basically, you cant mater one concept before moving onto the next, because they are just smaller parts that work together to make up a whole moving part. The more you learn, the more you’ll understand the previous stuff you learned. Its definitely a good idea to look back on prior lessons…you’ll find that stuff you didnt quite understand will make a lot more sense.
If you think that would help you go for it - when you look back you’ll see what you learned from them and what you still need to review. Before I did algo challenges - I was really struggling with loops and the array methods - they just seemed so weird to me and it was difficult to me - now that I’ve been forced to use them to solve algo problems I can easily use them and they’re an essential part of my process of completing a project
You get what you put into the program - freeCodeCamp gives you challenges and may link you to a specific MDN Page or forum thread - it’s up to you to read and practice using those features. I recommend using the freeCodeCamp Forum, MDN, or W3C-Schools whenever you are having trouble. As you continue through the program concepts will start to stick and you’ll become a better developer
I would go over each concept until you feel you could use the concept without internet access and you just know it. What happens at a development job if your internet access goes out? No reference materials unless you have something downloaded to the machine you are working on. So memorization is recommended as much as possible.
