I joined FCC a little over a month ago, with a dual purpose: to learn coding/front end development, and to acquire some knowledge so that I can assist my son as he studies similar material in high school (with plans to follow up in college). Made it through most of the Responsive Web Design material, working a few hours a day over the last month, taking copious notes, etc. to review as needed. Today, began the Responsive Web Design Projects section -and- brick wall.
Set up a CodePen account, started setting up the Tribute page using HTML & CSS, but virtually every line in the user stories is giving me problems. I can recall (either by memory or skimming my notes) most of the specific elements, properties, etc., but I am unable to apply them in a meaningful way in order to set up the Tribute page. It is incredibly frustrating.
I understand how it can be useful to examine the code from the example, or look at Tribute pages created by others, but that seems to defeat the purpose of creating your own code & webpage. Copying work of others does not seem like it will be useful should I ever need to create my own project, from scratch. And in retrospect, many of the challenges encountered during the FCC program seem to default to that approach. They tell you how to change the background color; you follow the instructions, change a word or two, and it is done. On to the next challengeā¦
I can do the individual challenges without difficulty, but putting the components together in a meaningful application (i.e., the Tribute and upcoming Projects) seems to require a totally different mindset. Has anyone else encountered this problem? Is there some approach that I am not taking into consideration?
Going to take a break for tonight and start fresh another time. Any thoughts would be appreciated.
You donāt have a specific question, but to complete the projects you do have to look back at what the challenges taught/showed you. Plus, if you canāt figure something out you do need to research your problem as well, i.e. google. Developers google.
This is pretty normal when starting out. Google all the things! Also looking at others code/projects is okay. When you look at others work really try to understand the code theyāve used and translate it into your own code for your own needs, not just copy and paste to your projects.
This is normal. They call it ātutorial hellā. When our brain struggles to find its own solutions after being led by the hand for so long.
Google stuff. Try stuff. But most of all, donāt beat yourself up.
AND- you can even just ask this group for clues to what you need next, if you dont want the whole answers.
They will tell you were to look to solve the problem, but you still get to google and try and fix it yourself.
Start maybe doing the bascs things, tackle one user story at a time, make sure your project passes that specific test, then move to the next one.
After that, you have made a bit of practice creating a page from scratch, make it so that you like how it looks!
Meanwhile, bookmark things: there are documentation websites, blogs or websites that focus on one specific thing (for example css, or css-grid, or css-flexbox), find them, bookmark them, go to see them whener you are stumped on how to do something.
Then keep researching
Learning how to search is a skill much useful to developers, make it yours
Thanks to all of you who replied. Things are progressing more smoothly this morning. Altered my approach slightly, reviewed my notes, and have successfully completed 5/10 tasks so far without difficulty. Going to hold off looking at other codes unless needed to overcome specific obstacles.
I think I also made it harder on myself initially, as I started out with a blank pen on CodePen rather than forking from the ātestingā pen, so I had no way of knowing if anything I was doing was properly entered. Live and learn.