Firstly thanks for thanks for taking the time out to read this and hopefully reply.
I have recently taken a keen interest in Coding and I’m gaining a real passion for it.I have come across freecodecamp to help me get started on my journey.
I have started of the course and currently learning HTML to design an APP. However my question is should I be taking notes along every topic i come across and practice the examples over and over again, or should i continue with the tutorials as intended and will I learn in due course with this consuming less of my time?. By the way as this is so new for me, it will take time to retain information. I hope this makes sense.
If you are already predisposed towards one style of learning I would definitely search for resources that are catered for that. They say practice makes perfect. Two pieces of advice, if you haven’t already, fall in love with learning and good documentation. You need to do the first because there will be a good many times you smash your face into your keyboard out of frustration and the second is because if you learn to understand the docs you’ll lessen the frustration from the first.
The number of hours I was able to put in sky-rocketed when I started studying with a short-term goal in mind, i.e. to complete (and fully comprehend) something that I had already been working on.
With regards to HTML that would mean going onto websites like Bootstrap, finding a menu or whatever that I liked, including it into a little website and then finally editing it to my own personal preferences.
Regarding FCC, I would say don’t simply move onto the next lesson just because you completed the task. Go onto a website like repl.it, put some music on and play around with what you’ve just learnt. Learning new concepts is very intense and there is only so much you’ll be able to learn in a single day. There is a bell-curve effect so don’t set yourself a daily goal of completely as many lessons as you can. It’s critical that you put in as many hours as you can, but you have to be able to switch gears. If you sign up for a free account with repl.it you can also save your work and then reference it back to the relevant FCC lesson.
Switching to this approach helped me go from a daily average of 20-45mins to 2hr+ (sometimes studying as much as 12 hours).
Taking notes and focusing on things is all well and good, but I would be careful about getting bogged down. There are so many things to learn on so many tangents (most of which you haven’t even seen yet) that if you try for deep understanding at this point, you may never get there. Just keep moving and learn as you go. You will have to go back later and learn some things in more depth, but that is OK.
I suggest you follow below 3 things in order to get hold of this.
1.Keep simple notes - This will be so much helpful when you are attempting complex challenges since you don`t have to look all over the place for help (Please refer below attachment - This is what I did).
2.Go through the challenges again (very quickly) after few days from the first day you have tried it. (Will help you to transfer you learning to long term memory).
3.Play with your code - This will help you to understand the underlying core concepts (will become a great advantage when you started learning variety of programming languages)
This is from my personal experience .I hope this will help.
Thank you so much all for your replies, and apologies for the late reply, I’m based in the UK. I think the best way forward would be to take simple notes and practice from what I have gathered!
Many Thanks
Mobeen
.I hope this will help.