Giving thanks and offering a comment

Greetings to one and all.

For some time now I have following the FreeCodeCamp map and enjoying the experience. But I have now hit a wall and I don’t know how to get around it. The only thing I can see to do is walk away from it and come back at a later date.

No matter what I have tried I just cannot get my head around the Weather App assignment. I certainly did not learn nearly enough in the lessons leading up to it to get this project done. I have tried to build a couple of weather apps from videos on YouTube and don’t get me wrong, I have learned a lot. I’ve learned about functions, and API’s and lots of stuff. But there still is a huge gap between what I know and what I apparently need to know to complete this assignment. I have determined this by looking at the solution. I know I wasn’t supposed to, but I needed to know what I didn’t know and what I would need to know. That turned out to be a lot. So before I can come back and complete that project and make it an original effort I’m going to have to look elsewhere to build my skills and knowledge.

I want to thank everyone in the forum who have given so generously of their time to help me through what I have done so far. I have found everyone to be very friendly and very helpful.

If anyone has any suggestions or observations for me I would appreciate hearing those because I really don’t know where to turn next.

Thanks again and all the best,

Luciano

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I’m also at the weather app (just finished) and in my experience FCC only teaches you the bare basics, so I just treat it as goal-setter. As you have already started doing, you need to look elsewhere to learn the required knowledge because FCC just doesn’t cut it in that regard and nor does it aim to it seems. Looking elsewhere is intended I think.

The only other comment I can give is try not to be too intimidated by the examples of the projects because all you actually need to do is fulfill the user stories. Anything else is just flair, which is nice but not strictly necessary, because you can always come back and improve your work once you have a better foundation.

Whatever you opt to do, I wish you luck with it.

Brad

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Yes, its a big leap to do the Weather App if you don’t have prior programming experience. Need to know JS, jQuery, API, JSON, etc. and then security limitations, mixed http/https content, etc.

Feel free to check out some free/paid Udemy courses on JS, jQuery, etc. and then come back and give the challenge another try again in the near future.

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Hey Luciano, Awe man I can just feel how deflated you are with this project! Something occurred to me while reading your post that I never considered before…indeed while the projects say not to look at the project code and do it yourself, I always felt it can be really helpful to have some sort of idea how something is done.

What you are experiencing now is exactly what I just experienced with the Tic Tac Toe project. I had no idea where to start…at all. So I decided to start looking for ideas and pouring through code of other campers who did this project, and the more I looked, the more confused I got. It felt like I was back at day one cause I had no idea what the heck was going on in that code. At. All. So after 2 full days of making my eyes bleed LOL I decided I was going to figure it out myself.

Going in, I knew it was going to be messy, and inefficient, and all over the place, but thinking about how other people solved it was steering me so off track I was inches away from how you feel now. I just finished my project last night…most people would scream to see my code, for sure…but right now Im basking in the glow of…I freaking did it!!!

Anyway, my whole big point is…after what i just went through and what you are going through now made me realize a possible reason for not looking at the project code…it gets in your head the idea that THATS the way it needs to be done and make you get overwhelmed because you dont understand that specific method, when in fact, there are many ways to solve a problem, its a matter of finding the way that makes sense to you. And how do you do that when yo uhave no clue where to start?

Well, the thing about FCC, is that it doesnt tell you exactly how to do every thing every step of the way…its designed to get you to build your skills not only to code, but also to learn how to find the information you need…so its always reminding us to READ-SEARCH-ASK. Keep breaking your project down into manageable pieces and asking questions. The great thing is that everyone here has been where you are…know the frustration (and it is frustrating!! Dont feel like you are alone in how you feel right now, cause you are totally not…Yesterday my project had me so mad I yelled at my computer! lol)

I really hope you stick to it… Definitely find the resources and information to help you get through this project, that is the point of the projects actually… but please dont give up on it… cause you can totally do this, that I am sure of. :slight_smile:

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I created a pen a while back that’s meant to give new users some practice with a real AJAX project (this has nothing to do with any FreeCodeCamp project). It’s not perfect, but it might help. There’s a lot of reading, but you can ask me questions here for clarification if you need it.

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Ohh this is great…wish I saw this when I was working on my API projects!!! Forked it to my CodePen for future reference, cause I still dotn haev it down pat enough to do it again without a lot of help. Thanks for sharing it :blush:

You might want to check out Harvard’s free CS50 course at https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-computer-science-harvardx-cs50x. It is challenging as well but they walk you through everything (there are a ton of lectures and videos to watch and the assignments are excellent) and it will give you a comprehensive and solid foundation to work from in the future.

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I’m sorry that you feel like you’ve hit a wall with the weather app. What everyone else here has said is great. What I often tend to do when I feel unequal to a project is to do what I am capable of and fake the rest (for now). For example, I might hard-code or randomly generate weather conditions on this one if I was really frustrated with API issues. When I feel up to it, I can come back and just work on those faked-out bits.

All of the advice for getting through a particular project aside, I hope you’ll continue on with FCC (maybe after or in addition to some of the other resources mentioned here). None of the later challenges build directly on the Weather Project. You’ll probably want to be able to complete this project before moving on to the projects at the end of the next section, but you can continue the FCC challenges.

Well this is what I’m talking about. If there’s a better community around I haven’t run into them. Thanks one and all.

Here are my takeaways.

  1. You can do a project YOUR WAY. Sort of like being in art class in grammar school and hey you’re not an artist.
  2. I’m not the only one who has hit a wall on their programming journey. Feels good not to be alone.
  3. cndragn, your heartfelt comments got me where I live. Thanks.
  4. PortableStick Thanks for the CodePen.
  5. You can learn a lot from doing projects that aren’t necessarily CodePen related. Following a project on YouTube I created this one: https://codepen.io/luciano991/project/editor/AYeyWQ/ I made sure I understood everything he was doing and why, and didn’t just copy and paste. The only reason it’s not working is that CodePen sends it’s request from an https:// and OpenWeatherMap requires a paid subscription for that.
  6. You can do the parts you can figure out, fake the rest and come back later and fix it.
  7. Thanks to shreecheryl I have signed up for that course. I truly think that’s what I’ve been missing.
  8. And to all I say I will not quit. And that’s thanks to your encouragement. I will keep you posted.

All the best,

Luciano

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This is so wonderful to read!!! I really was worried that you may not come back and see our posts, so Im really happy that you did and that it encouraged you to stick to it.

Our worst enemy is ourselves…we can convince ourselves that something cannot be done but at the heart of it…its just a matter of staying determined. Many people who have never programmed before made it through the course and also ended up with jobs. Theres no difference between you and them, I promise!

You’re right about this community…it really does rock. This is the first time in years Ive found a community I really feel like Im a part of, and the first time ever that Ive felt comfortable enough to reach out to others for help. Take advantage of that, cause one day you’ll be able to give back by sharing your story to someone who sounds just like you did. :blush:

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keep at it man, the only direction is ‘Up’.

Some days I feel like I’m really grasping all the concepts and everything is clicking,…other days I feel like an idiot.

I’m still trying to figure out the whole, “there’s different approaches to a problem” thing. Like I may solve a challenge using === and && and think, “yeah that works nicely!” Then I’ll read the hints and check what other people did and see they all use nested if statements and I just feel like, “Does that make more sense? Maybe it does…I’m an idiot.”

If anything learning programming seems to swing you from dramatic highs to crushing lows on an almost regular basis. Monday you feel like, “I can totally do this!” And then on Tuesday you’re like, “I’m an idiot and none of this makes sense.”

It’s brutal…but I keep telling myself that brutality is part of the learning curve.

I taught music for 20 years, particularly stringed instruments, (I started very young), and I’d have to explain to students that finger pain and building calluses, and the raw pain in your fingertips, is just part of learning. Eventually your fingers toughen up and get strong and you (sort of) forget later just how much it hurt for a while or how raw your fingertips really were.

So I’m telling myself learning programming is similar in a way. There will be pain, but you just keep pushing through it.

Genuinely this stuff is generally fun. It’s only those moments where you feel stuck or frustrated that aren’t fun,…but that isn’t every day.

And when I get stuck I go back a few or ten lessons and redo them until things like a for loop to iterate are just burned into my mind and make complete sense.

Because it’s not about passing the challenge to get on to the next one, it’s about learning the lesson the challenge is trying to teach you. Maybe it takes days to learn/pass a single challenge. Maybe it takes a week. But then it’s a lesson learned, right?

I keep comparing it to music and learning. You don’t learn an Am chord and then move on. You keep practicing that chord while learning other chords. Then you learn why an Am chord is an Am chord. What 3 notes make up that chord? What is the inversion of that chord? Why is an inversion an inversion? What is an inversion, anyway? What are all the different ways to play that one chord? Why Why Why?

‘Why’ is what keeps us coming back and learning these lessons.

Don’t give up, Sir. :slight_smile:

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So much truth in this…exactly how I feel too

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Luciano,

Your post touches on several things I have been thinking about lately.

Do we really have to figure EVERYTHING out by ourselves? Smarter people than me have figured out many things. There are plenty of open source projects to borrow code from. In an office you will have senior devs to guide you and offer suggestions.

Your employer isn’t going to care if the solution is uniquely yours or if you got the idea someplace else. It is probably more important that it’s secure, scalable, and maintainable. The important thing is you understand how the code you submit works. (It isn’t clear to me if you understand how the weather app you peaked at works) Developers learn patterns to common problems. Once in awhile somebody invents a better mouse trap. (New patterns)

At what point does the struggle go from beneficial to frustrating and counter productive?

Maybe there should be some “suggested example projects”. If you’re stuck on the weather app AJAX check out this github/codepen. In behind you in FCC so I am not the guy to make the suggestion. It might be helpful for mods/grads to add well built, similar projects that we could examine without peeking at “the answer”

You can do the parts you can figure out, the rest and come back later and fix it.

This sounds like iteration. I’m finally learning to build in small steps. Sometimes just having the CSS file change the body background color and console logging “test” so I know the CSS and js paths are working in my Gulp build process.

As there are many sources for web development, FCC has a very clear roadmap, at any stage you can pause, consult other sources and come back to FCC to see where to go next time.