Hello There!
I’m finally starting the projects section for my Responsive Web Design certification, but I feel like I haven’t retained much of the information. The projects themselves seem a little daunting and I’m a little nervous looking over what I’ll have to make over the next week or two or three.
Is this a problem for many of y’all who’ve been through the coding lessons?
Please let me know that I’m not alone in this!
Best,
Joben
Here’s a method I found helpful:
Set up your HTML code before you worry about content. Get your element tags (like <div>) in place and give them the correct attributes, then add the content.
And don’t be afraid to go back and review the lessons while you work. If you run into something where you know what you want to do, but not how to do it, the lessons are very helpful.
Hi !
Everyone started at ‘Hello World’ step <3
Step by step, you’ll start to build something. Then, something else, search something, discover something new, try it, fail it, start again, fly to something else, feel happy with a little piece, update it, frog it, try something else, see something uplifting and try to do it from scrap…and persist or not or till some elements become like a “routine” enough, to go to learn something else and level your xp 
Have fun with your coding times !
You’re definitely not alone.
For me, when it’s overwhelming I really have to force myself to narrow the scope. Instead of thinking about finishing the whole project, I try to think of finishing a component of the project. If that’s too big, make the scope even smaller. Repeat until it’s work seems doable.
Hi, I am doing a new application in SwiftUI and my emotional journey is like this so far.
Very excited, more to learn and discover, soon a new app in app store. - excited
Started the backbone, done with the planing of the app, choosing the tools( frame works etc) and realising how much I have to do. - panic, a bit of intimidation, unsettled, thinking already to give up
Go get a mug of coffee. - forget my last train of thoughts and feelings
Back to coding . Done the authentication logic, created screens for login/create account, navigation design style etc. - Very excited, the little progress now is rewarding
Run the progress to my testing team (wife an 8 years old son)
… End of the day.
Next day pretty much same cycle.
Thanks everyone for the words of encouragement and solidarity.
My first webpage is very much looking like a “first” webpage, but the work is getting done and I’m learning a lot along the way!
you can take a Notebook (that help for better creativity …) and draw the design of the page…then try to convert your design to an html, css code, one by one …
and i always advise you to build the plan, before starting the code, you place all the elements (main,div) in place to clearly distinguish the structure then you put the content afterwards,
+1 Notebook super fan <3 ! Do you have one ? Digital or handwritted or the two ?
Good idea to keep track of learnings / designs / ideas / snippets / notes on video…and keep all on same place
yes i have one and I am a huge fan of notebooks XD it’s really useful it allows me to memorize and to be creative, I often draw my designs, I take note of some video that I visualize , btw i have handwrrited…
what about you ? do you have one…
The projects are the main lesson. Think of the challenges that came before more like a “sample” of different things you can use, but they aren’t there to fully teach you and make you ready for the projects.
The goal of the challenges isn’t for you to go thru them and be 100% ready to do the projects without any problems. Rather the challenges give you a taste of what you will need to leverage in the projects. The projects are where you get to play around, run into problems, find answers, and learn.
If you are starting the project and have 0 clue as how to accomplish something, I’d recommend reviewing the challenges and resources you used before to accomplish the given task. If your doing something in the project and run into a problem, this is totally natural and expected. You are to go out, get answers (google your heart out :wink) and work around your problem.
Don’t make it a goal to remember everything from the challenge, rather just try to remember enough about the concept to know it exists. You should remember just enough to be able to look up the specifics to work on a problem. I’d compare it to knowing what you don’t know, and knowing what you don’t.
Finally, accept that you wont be able to start a problem and be able to execute it from start to finish without running into any issues, or needing to get some kind of help, this sort of stuff doesn’t happen. You can run into issues on day 1 and day 1 million. The goal isn’t to be able to be perfect, rather the goal is to be able to work around the problems you run into.
Good luck, keep building!
Yes, I forgot some rules and some syntax, so I had to google it, but by 4th project, I actually can’t recall if I even used google, plus I got much faster and made the code much cleaner.
Without failures, you cant have success -quote from main page of FCC.
The same here, I really appreciate to let some “white-space” in my head by writing down stuff into my book or note only few keywords, forget about on the moment, then jump into later ! I love to make collage and paper layouts with post-it and junk paper pieces.
I totally get that feeling like you’ve forgotten everything you just learned. It’s completely normal:
It’s easy to watch or read some information and for it to not stick. A vast majority of the learning comes from trying to implement something, failing, noticing where your assumptions were incorrect, and wrestling with this new information until it fits cleanly in your mental models.
The problem with many online tutorials is that they make sense enough that you don’t really question your ability to follow along. That’s precisely why these repeated, small exercises of struggling just enough to learn new hard-won lessons (those are the ones that really stick).
Don’t worry! It’s not about “not being smart enough to get it” as much as showing up every day to do a little more, and get 1% better every day. Over the weeks and months, your competency will grow like compound interest and you’ll genuinely wonder how they never made sense before. There’s never an ultimate sense of completion as much as:
“Welp, yeah I totally get A, B, & C …but time to figure out E
…oh woah, what’s this D concept?!
…yeah E makes sense now!”
I totally get where you’re coming from. I have the same problem with JavaScript. I can kind of grasp the concept of a challenge I’m currently looking at, but I can’t seem to retain what I learned at a moment’s notice. You’re not alone in this struggle
Hey
I get what you are going through right now. Trust me, I’ve been coding for a few years and I’m attempting the Front end projects now. I am also quite scared.
What I do is to revise a set of concepts that I want to use for a particular project. It so happens that once you implement a particular concept , your grasp becomes even better.
Take it slowly, you’ll master it eventually
Good luck
Hi Joben!
I found my journey very similar to yours. I did the certification lessons but ultimately I ended up just doing tick-box-exercises.
The best way to learn coding is to code. And take it slow. Every single ‘section’ of each single project can be a great opportunity to learn something new, something small, bit by bit.
Learning to code to me is learning how to DO something. So learning theory etc is useful but I find it more useful as guidelines whilst I’m trying to implement some code into a working project.
So I look around, find something I find captivating, try creating it myself. When I hit a wall I look around more, learn more, etc. I do this in perpetuity.
Imagine learning the theory of a language without ever trying it. Or reading a cooking book but never cutting the ingredients yourself, measuring them, smelling the food, tasting it. Learning how to tie a shoelace without ever tying it yourself. I can go on, I hope my point is transparent: coding is doing as much as it is learning the theory.
It’s OK to feel uncomfortable, uncertain and worried than you simply didn’t learn anything during the lessons. I think it should be like that. But I found the lessons as a great point of reference once I wanted to implement something
And there’s a great benefit to not knowing anything. Your mistakes will be so painful and so obvious afterwards that the learning curve will rocket-jump at some point. There will come a point where all the dots connect and you will realise exactly how it is that your unique brain learns something - ultimately it comes down to repetition. If you’re interested in the projects, and really try doing your best and learning slowly and carefully… You’ll be A-OK.
All the best,
Grizhlie
this has helped a lot! It brings the confusion level down a few notches for sure!
I am on JS now, but I am having trouble understanding it. Unofficial FCC Discord is really helping me, I annoy most of them quite frequently, but they always encourage me, and answer most of my questions
Thanks for all of your good words of wisdom @bradtaniguchi and @nhcarrigan
I promise you are not annoying any of us!