Feel like giving up

You Can Do This!
1

HI All,

I have been studying web development for just over a year via different tutorials Anegla Yu Full Bootcamp, Anthony Alicea Understanding the Weird Parts of JS and dabbled with a few others.

However i often come to a point where the tutorials get boring however i keep perserving through this only to find when i attempt the exercises and challenges i often cannot fully do them or just get stuck all together.

I have found SuperSimpleDev course on youtube and believed it was going well until i came up to Functions, Scopes and the general logic of things, and then the same thing happened i am really struggling to keep going and have often questioned my abilities/ intelligence at this point.

I am wavering at this moment in time whether i am going to carry on and thought i would reach out to see if anyone could shed any light on anything that may help overcome this.

I have attempted to create some project but often find that i only start then get stuck again and find myself in the same loop of not being able to progress any further.

This is my last effort of trying to reach out for any words or advice or methods that may help as i have reached a point of feeling so demotivated/ uninspired by programming i have now started to resent it. I am not sure if i do not have the brain for it and am wondering to pursue something else even though i have tried a few different i am not sure what that will be anymore.

Anything at this point would be welcomed.

Many thanks,

Serk

2

It seems like you’re having a hard time accepting that ‘human beings ought to fail to succeed in anything’. So you resent yourself or feel worthless, when you’re not able to meet your expectations. You’ll have to face your failures head-on and learn to accept them as a part of the learning process to overcome the thought that says, ’ you’re weak or not capable enough’, which also holds you back from trying and succeeding, eventually. In my case, I went through this feeling countless times during the beginning of my journey (pretty sure that others had to as well) but I prayed and got the strength to keep going on. And trust me, I succeeded over and over again. Sadly, had no person to teach me or encourage me. But, I prevailed through it all cause of the Lord, whose grace is sufficient in my weakness.
And it taught me self-dependence.
Anyways, if you’re having a hard time understanding the basic concepts like functions, scopes or the weird things of JS, you can reach out to me, and I’d try to help you with what I’m able to.
Either way, sooner or later a time is gonna come in your life, where you’ll have to learn to pick yourself up from the ground, when you fall.
Hope this helps.
God be with you on your journey.

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My advice, start coding your own projects. You can’t just sit and watch tutorials or do boot camps from A to Z. You can’t expect to be able to learn everything up front and then be perfect at it.

Learn on the fly, find new things, new problems, and new solutions. Learning by doing is the only way.

Next time you get stuck ask for help on the forum.

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4

Tutorials are boring and sometimes out dated. It gets tedious in the extreme watching 50 hour tutorials and pausing every 30 seconds in order to copy what they do or catch some piece of info.

I would build your own projects and rely on chatgpt to help clarify points of confusion or explain concepts, using documentation and stack overflow as back up to ensure the answers it provides are correct. You will be far more engaged if building your own projects.

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I’m sorry that you are going through this right now. I’m also studying the same field for more than a year and there’s a difference:

  1. I followed a course outline where I learn topics and apply them through actual programming, building things and testing them.

  2. I keep my focus on the course I am taking. I don’t look for other resources unless if I want clarification on a certain concept.

It can be tempting to learn the same concept over again if you are unsure with your abilities. That is why we practice to assure that we understood, even at the minimum, the topics presented.

If you have the basic idea, you can move on to the next. Eventually as a professional, I think that’s the time for you to dive in greater detail.

It’s good that you managed to reach out with the community. I think what keeps yourself together is that desire, as a person, to be better at your current capability.

Try and look back at your past successes, you’ll see. :slightly_smiling_face:

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This sounds like you are in tutorial hell, which is where you are stuck watching tutorials to “prepare” for your projects, but once you start the actual project work you feel “stuck” and “unprepared” so you go back to watching tutorials, which becomes a loop.

So to escape tutorial hell, you break the loop at the point where you start doing the project. To stay in the loop you continue relying on tutorials which specify exact steps in exact orders to perform exact steps. To get out of the loop you don’t use tutorials and instead instead rely on different forms of help.

Stuff like:

  • reading the official docs
  • following written guides (which are similar to tutorials, but could be more specific to specific problems you face)
  • finding answers for specific issues you face, rather than entire projects (stack overflow)

The issues with tutorials are that they only go over 1 specific way to do things, don’t go over every issue you may face, and usually make things “seem easy”. So once you go out on your own, you’ll find other ways to do things, find issues and find it more difficult than the tutorial.

Finding help without tutorials requires some other skills that aren’t covered in tutorials. Stuff like debugging issues/problems you face, and getting help for them. This is where understanding what issue you are facing, and phrasing it in such a way you can find relevant answers can make or break solving the problem. This skill in itself can help you learn/solve anything, but it requires some training and experience and isn’t found in tutorials (or at least I couldn’t find it haha)

The best way to gain this “problem solving” experience is start facing problems where you get stuck, then building your own personal method for finding solutions to said problem. At first things will be slow, difficult, annoying, and you wont move fast that’s ok. Once you solve one problem after googling 500 different things, you’ll learn 500 ways not to search for a problem, or eliminate a bunch of semi-related problems/solutions.

Finally, progress with this sort of stuff will appear different than if you followed a tutorial. Each thing you do is experience under your belt. With experience you can get out of any problem… but to gain that experience you need to fall into all of those problems. So just because your stuck don’t feel like “you’re not smart enough” for this, or “you’re not cut out for this”, you will get stuck even if you have years/decades of experience. It happens to everyone. So just because your project is a blank screen you can’t get working, seek out the problem and find solutions to it thats development.

Good luck, keep building, keep learning :+1:

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HI All,

I would like to thank everyone for the wise words and encouragement on my problem/ issue. I am trying not to get discouraged and not give up on web development, hopefully this is just another sticking point which will be overcome with a lot more determination/ perseverance.

I was wondering if anyone has any suggestions on things that I could build to solidify the things i have learnt up till now?

If anyone has any suggestion on the things they built from the very basic upwards so i can try cement my learning i would highly appreciate it.

Kind Regards,

Serk

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Have you followed all the course work on here for the first few certs? including building the projects?

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Finding an itch to scratch is one way of staying motivated with a project. Something you care about or are interested in. Even if it is just surface level, looking at something you care about is easier than some random subject given to you as an assignment.

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Build a full CRUD application using a frontend framework like React as well as a REST API… e.g. a management platform of some kind.

You could build a project management app for example that includes a Kanban board, and also learn about Agile working processes while you build this. You could base this on Azure Devops or Jira.

This kind of project would be highly relevant to jobs.

Don’t waste your time with calculators, hamburger builders, tic tac toe games etc.

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I’m also looking for relevant projects to build but having a hard time deciding after doing a bunch of smaller ones. This sounds like a great idea

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12

Obviously you will surely feel like giving up as you’re in Tutorial Hell like me in 2021. So 1st of all welcome to “Tutorial Hell” officially.

Now how to get out of it ?

  1. Head over to frontend mentor and start building projects daily basis
  2. Stop watching all the tutorials now onwards
  3. Start with smallest projects like building Gmail login page ( only with HTML and CSS )
  4. New few weeks just build projects with HTML and CSS, once you’re confident with these then only move on to the JS
  5. Join Frontend Mentor discord channel and join some group who are building project, be each others accountability buddies.
  6. Stop studying / building alone, as in real world scenario you need to work in a team and collaborate each day each hour of the day.

All the very best for getting out of tutorial hell, you can do it and you will do it.

Read books like Stop worrying, start living; atomic habits etc

Regards,
Vikram

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13

Welcome to the community,

I was the same about 6 months ago :frowning:

Nothing I tried seemed to be working, and I was unable to remember simple things I had been able to do the day before…

The only thing that really changed things around for me, was recording what I did.
I started looking into habbit training. Started making records of when I went to bed, woke up, played games, followed tutorials etc.
Once a week (and I still do this) I’d look back at the week before to see if there was just one thing, I could try to improve on.

TBH, when I started doing this, I didn’t think it would work, and feared it would take forever for me to see any benefits.

I have now finished freeCodeCamp ‘Responsive Web Design’, have gone on to learn javaScript with freeCodeCamp and P5.js with happyCoding .io and The Coding Train.
I have a folder full of completed practice project I’m proud of.

If I hadn’t recognised I was in a bad place, I would never have tried to change things for the better.

It can be overwhelming to look at the big picture, much easier to focus on just one small achievable goal that will get you a tiny bit closer to where you want to be.

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For projects, Try to keep them simple and modular, then you can combine them later.

For example I have a project in P5.js that spawns 5 points on a square tile.
These modular projects are useless on their own.
But can be powerful when combine. The 5 points could become spawn points for grass on a lawn, or I might increase the tile size and amount of points to make a sky of stars.

Start small, it all adds up in the end

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Hi Alextm1,

I did before i was beforehand and go as far as Nested Loops however i changed my learning resources as i was advised but someone who is a senior developer to follow Weird Parts of JS on Udemy which i did.

However i could always go back and refresh my memory with the lessons but i am not sure if this will further add to the tutorial hell that i have been experiencing.

I suppose i could try to look at fontend mentor as i have previously done but i the main concern/ issue would be selecting what code to use and when or finding something or interest to build.

16

Don’t think about it too much, procrastinating will not help, just start coding.

You are not meant to know how to solve it before you start, you learn as you go. Experience can not be taught. You can’t learn to walk by reading about it.

17

HI All,

Thank you all for your advice and solutions to my issue however i have attempted to try a code a project via some of the methods suggested above, however i am just staring at the screen and not exactly sure how to begin.
In the past i have been able to use frontend mentor and have completed some HTML/CSS projects but as i tried to pick up JS which has caused nothing but issues i am severely disconnected from coding and lack of enthusiasm or care to even try. Its almost like i have forgotten HTML/CSS and cant seem to really connect the dots with JS, i mean i understand whats been said but cant seem to figure out what type of code that would used where and why.

E.g.

if, else if or switch statement?

where a function would be used and why

where a event listener would be used

it seems like i dont think in programming way to some extent and not sure if this is a sign that maybe is not for me and i am trying something that my brain is not structed to think in this manner.

I am not sure how to feel excited or bothered about it anymore and generally feel exhausted to even try to continue. I am not sure if this is a feeling that will pass but as i haven’t had any ah ha moments or coded something i genuinely care about or even think about anything i would like to code or solve anymore.

I am not sure if this is normal or if this genuinely means my interests lie in other areas, i am wondering has anyone else experienced this and if so does anyone have any solutions to overcome this feeling.

I am not trying to make excuses but i just dont want to waste anymore time on something that seems like i havent or wont achieve and just trying to be rational about my decision moving forward as i have been at this for around a year now.

Anyways if anyone has any thoughts on what i have tried to explain above please do let me know as i am genuinely depressed and truly have kind of given up with it all at this moment in time.

Kind regards,

Serk

18

May be you’ve pushed yourself so much to understand everything that you didn’t care to give yourself enough rest to recover from the stress your brain was under and may be you were doing it for quite long, which eventually burned you out.
Or you are allowing your emotions to decide your interest. Not everytime you’re gonna feel happy about something that made you feel that way at first. Cause in the end your priorities will decide what you should be doing and what you shouldn’t be, despite, how you feel about that.
And about your ability to be able to learn this skill or not.
It’s something that you gotta decide, NOT anyone else.
You’re the only one, who can conquer your own fears, grow beyond your limitations and do things you never thought you’d be able to. It’s all about your willingness to face those challenges head-on, and ability to endure through hardship or just turning your back on them, thinking you’re not able.

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HI Rajtanuchakrvarty,

Thank you for responding it is quite possible that i have pushed myself so hard to try learn everything quickly that i have not allowed enough time for the concepts to be absorbed.

As i have previously stated i am not sure how i feel in regards to where i am cut of for web development if it is a interest/ hobby or a long term career as i previously thought when i originally started.

I have however decided to go back to the freecodecamp responsive web design and start from there to see if i still have an interest or passion for web development as a whole. As i have previously done some HTML/ CSS this would be quicker to finish and i am hoping that these wins will reinvigorate my passion for the field again.

I appreciate your feedback and responses on this subject matter, i would like to know your thoughts if this is a good approach ?

Many thanks,

Serk

20

Firstly, you need to practice to understand the concepts well. Just consuming articles one after the other about different concepts and flooding your brain with endless words, can’t get you anywhere, but will only exhaust your brain, before you even had the chance to practice and consolidate the truthfulness of what you read.
‘Passion isn’t innate, it is developed’.
And I appreciate your willingness to keep trying even when it sounds like you’re zombified (didn’t mean it to offend, but meant about your feelings).
Regarding the steps you’ve decided to take that is to go through the RWD section. I think it is good. I’d say you should try experimenting on things that you learned to have a better understanding of how something can be used in different ways other than what you’ve been taught.
And this should develop a solid foundation and strong understanding of the things you learned leading to increase in interest.
Hope this helps.
Lord be with you and guide you.
P.S: I’ve been there. So I know it feels.