With all the codes going around the internet and so many jobs demanding you to know specific language.
I was so wondering what is everyone’s overall understanding of one particular language or do you just know a little bit of each language and just run with it?
It seems that the deeper I study, the less I know.
Lets review this dilemma visually using asterisk graph.
The Asterisk scale goes from 1-10.
1 means knowing little and incompetent.
10 means know it all and that you can explain all the tech details under the hood.
Drop in your skill evaluation as well. I think it will be helpful as moral support for people who are overwhelm by this.
At the moment
HTML - 4 / 10
CSS - 3 / 10
JavaScript - 5 / 10
Java - 3 / 10
SQL - 2 / 10
Played around with many other languages prior as well, they too also hovering between the same scale. Such as, ActionScript 3 (Long time ago), C/C++, Perl, C#, etc.
Despite knowing these stuff. I can’t help thinking that there has to be more to it than just studying the technical documents that everyone praises so much about. I am basically stuck inside a loop hovering between the knowing and understanding that many people seem to “just get it”. It doesn’t seem that it is helping the harder I try. I am still stuck on the technical understanding side.
Or maybe I am just overthinking things making it more complicated when it shouldn’t be.
Well I dunno about you, but I learn the most / the best, when I actually challenge myself. The harder the task I give me, the better I can remember and the more I seem to learn and understand. So if you are doing the FCC projects, try to add some kind of “challenge” to each of them in addition to the user stories. This can be something as trivial as “use only vanilla JS” or “use Framework XY even if it makes no sense” but also something like additional features that you don’t know how to implement (yet). Try to add something “new” to every thing you create.
Aside from that: Build, build, build. The more the better.
The more stuff you make, even if it seems that you don’t make much progress in the grand scheme, helps cement your knowledge and over time you will notice how much your earlier projects “suck” and how much better you have become.
Lastly, I guess you can never really know everything, nor do you have to. With Google at your hands and some mad Google-Fu skills you don’t really have to remember every little nook and cranny.
In any case, we’ve all been there and doubted our own skills, but hang in there, in due time you’ll see that you actually improved a lot and are far from being “in a loop”.
So, I’ve just been tasked with writing some server-side code in Python. If I had to score myself in Python, I’d place myself somewhere between 1.5 and “Ham sandwich”. Python never came up in the interview or in the job description. I wrote some just-barely-nontrivial Python code about 3 years ago, but without that, I’d have nothing to go on but the fact that it’s vaguely similar to Ruby and some ES6. If I had to write Lisp, I wouldn’t be writing this right now (or eating, or sleeping). But I know enough about programming to get by in Python, and more importantly, I know how to find out what I need to.
I wouldn’t worry so much about ranking yourself in any particular technology, but if I had to put numbers to it, I’d say you’re better off pushing for 6+ in one language, and 2+ in a bunch of others. The more you learn, the better you can adapt, and the stronger your general foundation for programming is. So, to answer your question, you’ll (eventually) need both depth and breadth in your study. It’s probably more important for you to go for depth first, though.
The easiest way to learn to code is to not become attached to it; meaning that if you try to write some code and it doesn’t work, take a deep breath and look at your code and you will find that a simple error of missing a character within the written code. Don’t skip over any steps, this may be a challenge due to we want to begin writing code to create awesome stuff but the little steps are the secrets to becoming a great coder. Just don’t be so hard on yourself and enjoy learning how to write code in a fun like way.
It seems How to Code: Systematic Program Design, which uses Beginning Student Language (BSL)–not a real programming language, but a small, simple formation of the core of all major programming language–is an excellent resource for building conceptual understanding, or the ability to [quote=“P1xt, post:5, topic:87707”]
read a set of requirements and envision all the various mechanisms within an application you’ll need to implement in order to transform those requirements into a functioning application
[/quote]
(I haven’t started it yet, but it’s in my to-do. Like many others, I imagine, my initial reaction was to put it off, repelled by the idea of having to learn a not-real language.)
You’ve read my mind
All this code writing is nice and all, but the underlying problem is I don’t know much about CS stuff. Gonna have to hit up on that one.
Fair enough, but maybe because C doesn’t change? I’m asking - I have no idea.
I’ll give you 9.9/10.
JavaScript keeps evolving. For example, Kyle Simpson who wrote the YDKJS series is still learning it.
I’ve been speaking, reading and writing english & french for almost 40 years (I’m 43) I give myself about 8.5/10 in these two languages, despite being completely fluent in both. I think it’s a bit much to think of oneself as being 10/10 in anything really.
So I should switch to C… ha!
No I like the JavaScript community (so far anyway).
I’m a 1.5/10 right now. Starting to grasp closures; very exciting!
Cheers
No matter how much I learn I think I’ll probably always feel like I’m at about a 2 or 3 out of 10 lol. I’ve made some static web pages, and at this point even a couple small jquery projects, but the more I learn the more I feel like I don’t know. A deep ocean of knowledge out there to be learned…
